


Metamorphosis

by khilari



Category: Watchmen (Comic)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Kink Meme, Multi, Xenophilia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-03-09
Updated: 2011-07-21
Packaged: 2017-10-07 20:04:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 27
Words: 32,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khilari/pseuds/khilari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rorschach transforms into a small, insectoid creature which Dan dubs an 'imp'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Changes

**Author's Note:**

> This was written, and is still being written, as a series of oneshots rather than a multi-chaptered story. So if anyone wonders why there seems to be no overarching plot, it's because there isn't one. Just a series of glimpses of Dan and Rorschach's lives as they try to cope with something completely unexpected.

They're back in Dan's kitchen after a patrol, sharing coffee and talking tactics, when Dan notices the blood. It's dripping out from under Rorschach's coat, forming a puddle on the floor beneath his chair one sinister drop at a time. Rorschach hasn't noticed, intent on the chess pieces he's co-opted as gangsters, and Dan stares at him almost able to believe he's imagining things.

'Uh, buddy?' he says. 'You're bleeding.'

'Don't feel anything,' says Rorschach. He turns, looks under his chair, and even without an expression he looks like he's wondering where the blood has come from. He shrugs out of his coat. 'Better take a look.'

There is blood on his vest, but no slash in it. Nor in his shirt, nor undervest although the back of it is almost entirely red. Dan peels them off as gently as possible, although Rorschach seems numb to any pain. Underneath there is a gash, right down the line of Rorschach's spine and gaping wide, the edges of the skin peeling back from each other.

'God,' says Dan. He doesn't know whether to call an ambulance or try to stitch it himself, it can't be as deep as it looks or Rorschach would be dead. Grabbing a teatowel to try and stem the bleeding comes first, and if Dan can just stop it enough to run for the first aid kit then maybe he can fix this. Pressing the teatowel to the gash he sees something caught in it, a piece of cellophane wrap waving from the edge of the wound. It makes no sense, none of this does, and with a sense of unreality Dan reaches out to pull it away from the gash. It almost doesn't surprise him when it comes and comes, like a handkerchief from a magician's pocket, as large as a towel, and then a tablecloth, a second piece starting to unspool alongside the first. And then the whole kitchen is filled with shimmering waving transparency, like thin silk scarves.

Rorschach turns to look at them too, puzzled and alarmed, and then his head falls forward, dangling from a neck that looks broken. The steady drip of blood becomes a gush, spreading and splashing over Dan's floor, over his feet in their brown leather slippers. Dan yells, tries to staunch the bleeding but the strange silky stuff is in the way. Tries to catch Rorschach as he slumps, landing on the floor with a thunk of his lolling head. His body starts twitching, spasming as he rolls in his own blood. Dan grabs for the telephone, never mind that Rorschach's still in uniform and in Dan's house. He's bleeding to death and having some kind of fit, it doesn't matter if he never forgives him. Before he can hit the numbers the gash in Rorschach's back splits open and something emerges.

It's small, barely larger than a child, and with a disproportionally large head. Spindly, barely there, with arms and legs like twigs. Tail with a sting, like a scorpion, skin stretched and white like a burn scar. Its face is hideous, almost human lips grey-blue and stretched around mandibles, forehead bulging to accommodate huge, lidless, coppery eyes. The transparent stuff is resolving into wings, shimmering and trembling around the monstrous creature at their centre.

It looks like something from a horror movie, or the nastier kind of fairy tale, but Dan is too angry to be afraid. Whatever this thing is it just killed Rorschach, and he grabs the biggest knife from his rack as it chitters at him. The knife hits the edge of one wing and the creature grunts, tries to bundle them behind it. When Dan strikes again, half blinded by tears but aiming at the narrow ribcage, it swings its stinger at him, missing by yards, and runs for the stairs.

It's still clumsy and takes the stairs on all fours, chittering frantically. Dan grabs the back of a wing and hauls it down, pinning the frail body. He manages to trap the tail under one knee, the other pressing between its shoulderblades to pin it to the stairs, surprised he managed that without being stung. He pulls its head back with one hand, baring its neck to his knife. It makes a sound and, even through a mouth that can't manage human speech and from a chest he could almost get his hands around, Dan recognises it as a sob. It hasn't tried to hurt him, that stinger never came anywhere near him, only to frighten him and get away. Dan eases back the pressure on it.

'Rorschach,' he says, quietly. 'That you, buddy?'

It nods and, when Dan pulls away, sits up and wipes its nose on the back of its hand. The gesture's human enough to somehow dispel all doubts. Dan drops the knife and puts his head in his hands.

'I thought you were dead, eaten from the inside out like a grub with an ichneumon wasp,' says Dan. Rorschach makes that odd chittering again, although the rhythm suggests he's trying to form words. Dan smiles at him and risks brushing his hand against one sunken, distorted cheekbone. 'I'm so glad you're not.'

'Hurm.' It's not a word but it's a recognisable sound at least and it gives Dan hope that Rorschach may figure out how to form words later. For now he'll find him some writing paper.

'You know, our coffee's probably still warm,' says Dan. 'I'll bring it and your chess board through to the living room.'

Later he'll clean up the macabre state of his kitchen. Later he'll try to figure out what just happened and why, and what the hell Rorschach is now. Later. For now he's going to fetch their coffee and sit in the living room with his partner and pretend that nothing's changed. Because Rorschach's alive and for now that's really all that matters.


	2. Lunacy

Rorschach spends the next few weeks living with Dan, there's nowhere else he could reasonably go. He wears his mask constantly, to Dan's relief as it's now less creepy than his real face. Rorschach's legs are stiff and weak but the slightest ripple of his wings can loft him several feet into the air so he finds it easier to float around than walk. And Dan knows he's being unfair, handling it badly, but the sight of that stiff, spidery body hovering around the house makes his skin crawl every time.

If Dan's handling it badly, Rorschach's handling it worse. He's raided Dan's airing cupboard and hung blankets over every mirror in the house. They found out after the first few days that his diet is now restricted to fruit, sugar and milk but he forces down other foods anyway, sweetcorn, tuna, eggs, and endures stomach aches every night rather than admit that his physiology has changed. He spends most of his time in the guest room, curled up under the duvet. His skin has changed colour and texture to match the cream cotton of the sheets, something Dan finds simultaneously fascinating and disturbing. His partner is trying to disappear.

The first time Rorschach goes outside is during the first night of the full moon. Dan goes upstairs to check on him that evening and finds him perched on the windowsill of the spare room staring at the newly risen moon. The streetlamps below reflect orange on his wings and the latex of his mask.

'Going out,' he says in the strange grinding buzz that's the only voice he can manage. It sounds inhuman, and he often chooses to still write instead of using it.

'Will you be okay?' asks Dan. Rorschach's gone without even a nod, and Dan spends the rest of the night worrying too much to sleep. His partner returns at dawn, tired and discouraged, huddling into his usual lump on the bed without speaking a word.

The next night Rorschach leaves again, but Dan wakes from a fretful doze around midnight to find him perched on the foot of the bed. The window is open and the full moon is shining through it, somehow too close and bright. Rorschach's wings catch the silver light and his mask is off, showing gleaming orange eyes. He looks demonic, horror movie monster watching the innocent victim sleep, and Dan's breath catches in his throat. Rorschach jumps from his place at the foot of the bed and hovers, parallel to Dan, his wings filling the whole room with silver haze. There's something blank about his shining eyes. An ululating keen rises from his throat and every hair on Dan's body stands on end.

There are pincers protruding from his formerly featureless crotch, thick, black and wet, and Dan's stomach lurches at the sight. He's thinking of incubi, demons that rape humans in their sleep, but this is Rorschach. The terror's only skin deep.

'Buddy,' he says softly. 'Can you hear me?'

The oversized head jerks and lambent eyes meet his, sentience coming back into them. Rorschach seems to realise where he is and reaches down, trying to push the pincers back into his body. Dan's hard under the duvet. He shouldn't be, but danger always turns him on. After reading about incubi he dreamt of them taking him, forcing pleasure from his trembling body. He licks his dry lips, skin crawling with a mixture of revulsion and lust.

'You don't have to stop,' he whispers to the monster above him, and pushes the duvet aside.

Rorschach drops onto him like a falling leaf, lands on his leg and pincers wrap hard around his thigh. They squeeze desperately, he can feel the ring of bruises they'll leave, as if they've been aching for something to grip. Rorschach's rutting against him, humping his leg like a dog, he can feel the wet patch on his leg. Then Rorschach noses Dan's fly open and takes his erection into his mouth. Dan whimpers as his cock slides under layers of mandibles, afraid he's going to lose it altogether, but something soft closes around it like being held between two sponges.

Rorschach's body is pulsing colours, bands of them rippling down his spine, green, red, purple, blue. Deep, rich colours, dark in the moonlight. The weird ululating cry rings out again, Dan feels it vibrating Rorschach's throat and making it squeeze around his cock. Wings drape over the bed, covering Dan in fluttering, tickling, silk until every inch of skin is sensitised. Rorschach's sting is touching his hip without piercing, and he wonders if he should grab it but he _trusts_.

Dan bends at the waist until he can reach down and slide a hand between Rorschach's body and his own leg, loosening the pincers' grip enough to slip it in. What he feels there isn't a cock, it's dome shaped and about the size to fill his palm. Soft and slick. He rubs experimentally, makes Rorschach buck and whine. The whine makes his throat vibrate again and Dan echoes him.

Rorschach is trembling and bucking, his stinger plunges into the mattress as if he doesn't trust it near Dan now he's so close to losing control. He cries out again, louder than before, and his throat presses in, vibrating until Dan can't hold back and comes with a scream of his own. Afterwards his hand is soaking wet, he's not the only one that came.

Rorschach is pulling himself up, pincers sliding back inside him, turning the colour of Dan's sheets as if he can go invisible on the spot. Dan rubs his hand clean on the duvet and grabs Rorschach before he can run. Rorschach's chittering frantically, too distressed to remember how to speak. When Dan pulls him into his arms the chitters dissolve into sobs.

None of the stories about incubi involve holding the monster for hours afterwards while it sobs brokenly, but it's dawn before Rorschach manages to stop. Considering his state of mind for the last two weeks it isn't surprising, perhaps it will even do him good to finally let it out. Dan looks at the trembling spidery body in his arms and finds he can do so without revulsion. Perhaps it's impossible to be revolted by someone you've just had amazing sex with.

'Violated you,' says Rorschach when he can talk.

'You didn't do anything I didn't agree to,' says Dan firmly.

'Why?' asks Rorschach. 'Pity?'

'Don't be ridiculous. There are limits to the things I'll do for pity and having sex with weird demon-imp creatures is one of them. I wanted it.'

'Makes no sense. Hideous.'

'Terrifying,' agrees Dan, brushing tears off Rorschach's cheek with his thumb. 'Which is actually the turn on.'

'Hurm. Pervert.' But he sounds reassured, as far as Dan can read emotions from his odd voice, and snuggles back in against Dan without complaint. Worn out with sex and crying it's not long before he's asleep. Leaving Dan to ponder the sight of the full moon through the window, and wonder about lunar mating cycles. Well, they have one night of the full moon left. Maybe he can persuade Rorschach to make the most of it.


	3. Acceptance

Rorschach always knew, deep down, that there was something wrong with him. Something inhuman and monstrous under the skin. He tried to hide it, tried to use it, but now the monster is on the surface where everyone can see. Every time Daniel looks at him he wants to die of shame. Except at the full moon, which he fears and longs for at once knowing the moonlight will destroy all inhibitions. He'll lose himself in pleasure, treating Daniel as a monster's whore, and afterwards lie wrapped in his victim's arms shamelessly accepting comfort. The thought of Daniel's hands on his changeable skin, feeling his sharp, elongated bones, makes him flinch. But there's barely a week left until it will happen again.

Rorschach is sitting on the kitchen floor spooning tinned rice pudding past his mandibles. It tastes good, sweet and milky, only the rice tastes wrong. Soapy, but at least not rancid like the spam that preceded it. His wings are draped around him on the floor, they used to fill the air of any room he entered but holding them up costs effort now. They ache. Daniel enters the kitchen and he shrinks against the cupboards, skin matching the wood grain automatically. The kitchen light comes on and the sudden brightness hurts his eyes, he wishes he could blink. Daniel looks at him without disgust now, but the pity and irritation on his face are hardly better.

'You've got to stop doing this to yourself,' he says, looking at the three tins in front of Rorschach. 'I've got loads of fruit. Cream, honey, yoghurt. Am I going to have to put locks on the cupboards?'

He tries to make the last sentence a joke, but his expression says he's really thinking about it and panic hits Rorschach out of nowhere. He can't look like a human, can't talk like a human, can't fully act like a human. Can't even control his urge to mate. But he can eat like a human, make choices about what goes down his throat. It's the only vestige of control he has left.

'Stop me eating what I like and I won't eat at all,' he growls, voice taking on weird harmonics.

Daniel looks at the tins again. The rice pudding contains sugar and milk, he can probably digest the tomato juice the beans were in but not the beans themselves. The spam won't do anything for him other than giving him a stomach ache, but humans need protein even if he doesn't. Daniel sighs, looks defeated. Picks the tins up and starts rinsing them out. His movements are jerky, angry, and his bulk looms over Rorschach's tiny form, the same difference in size as an adult and child. Rorschach is breathing quickly, heart humming in his chest. He can see Daniel's hand with the knife, face screwed up with fury and grief. He can see his mother's hand coming down, eyes blazing with hatred. His body is screaming danger at him, and he drags himself up. Presses back against the cabinets as if his pitiful camoflage was actually making a difference. Steps away from them shakily, eyes fixed on Daniel's back, and spreads his wings.

They loft him into the air and then give out, he falls like a kite that's failed to catch the breeze. Lands hard on his aching stomach and wraps around it with a whimper. When he hears Daniel's footsteps coming closer he scrambles away on hands and knees like the insect he resembles, and when hands catch him under the arms he turns and bites.

'For fuck's sake, Rorschach!' Daniel's voice is a roar in his ears and Rorschach tries to scramble out of his arms, but his limbs are unco-ordinated and his eyes won't focus. He wakes up in the guest room bed. Daniel is sitting on it next to him, he's no longer angry and has gone back to looking defeated. Daniel never stays angry with him for long, he knows that and can no longer understand his earlier panic. There are a collection of cuts and bruises on the inside of Daniel's arm. Rorschach wants to disappear and his body obliges, turns him the cream colour of the sheets and pillows.

'Sorry,' he says. Daniel tries to take his hand and he jerks it away. Daniel shouldn't touch him.

'Dammit, Rorschach,' says Daniel quietly. 'I don't think even Adrian ever published a self-help book for imps with eating disorders.'

'Not an eating disorder,' says Rorschach, frowning. 'Eating disorders are for vain teenagers.'

Daniel chuckles wearily, there's no real humour in the sound. 'Making yourself ill every night is pretty disordered. I know I can't even imagine how hard this is for you, but you're going to have to accept that you're not human anymore.'

'Anymore, Daniel?' says Rorschach, bitterness clear even in his strange voice. 'Never was human. Too many instincts, change too deep. Too…biological. Messy.' The change must have involved growing his new body inside his old one, without disturbing any of its processes until metamorphosis hit. An experiment wouldn't have worked so well, or would have been more like Doctor Manhattan's transformation. He looks away. 'Think my mother always knew I was a monster.'

'Rorschach.' Daniel kisses his mouth, pressing against thin lips and hard mandibles. Kisses the dome of his forehead, the thin patches of skin over his eardrums, the base of his neck. Rorschach catches Daniel's face between his hands, skeletal fingers macabre against soft cheeks.

'Daniel. We can't. Not full moon.'

'This isn't about sex,' says Daniel. 'Just. Let me.'

He wants to say no, he should say no, but he owes Daniel. For the safety of his house, for the bite on his arm, for the squandered food eaten by someone it can't possibly nourish. He owes Daniel more than he can ever repay and he hates them both for that. But Daniel's hands slide tenderly over his barely there hips, his elongated ribcage where the skin clings so hard the ribs are nearly breaking through. Rub gently at his swollen stomach and trace the fluttering edges of his wings. They touch him with intent, a secret language, and his hands slip away from Daniel's face.

Daniel trails kisses down Rorschach's long body. Presses them tenderly to the underside of his tail with the stinger cupped safely between Daniel's hands. Kisses the tiny palms of his hands and sucks on the long fingers, leaves kisses that tickle the insides of his knees. With hands and lips and tongue Daniel writes acceptance on his skin. This is your body, this is you. And that's okay.

Rorschach rolls over and hides his face, digs his hands hard into the sheets. It's not okay, he's a monster, hideous and depraved. He doesn't want to feel better about it. Daniel's hands stroke his spine, clever hands that can fix things almost too small to see, and they say otherwise. Soothe him, tell him to rest. Relax. You don't need to hate yourself for this. Rorschach's chest aches with tears and he can't take this kindness, would be more comfortable with pain.

'Daniel. Daniel, _stop_,' he begs, and Daniel does. Leaves him washed up and trembling on the bed like the survivor of a shipwreck, the air around him suddenly too cold. He wants to climb into Daniel's lap and cushion his frail body against Daniel's larger one. He wants to crawl under the duvet and never come out. He wants to cry. Daniel pulls the duvet over his shivering body, tucks it gently around his shoulders and leans down like a parent about to kiss him goodnight.

'I'm sorry,' says Daniel.

Rorschach curls up, body exhausted but too tightly wound for sleep. 'I know.'


	4. Technical

Daniel is sitting on the kitchen floor, a slice runs from his shoulder down nearly to his spine and blood is dripping slowly to the floor. It's a poor choice of place, bringing memories of another pool of blood, another wound, but this one can be staunched and stitched and later will be all but forgotten. Rorschach stitches, long fingers clumsy with the needle, wincing every time he pushes it too deep. The sutures are rough and jagged, too tight or too loose, slipping and forming odd angles. He couldn't prevent this injury and now he's struggling to even fix it. Weak, stupid, useless, clumsy, the words form a mantra in his head. Finally it's done. He runs a finger over the messy seam, huge black stitches in soft human skin.

'Thanks, buddy,' says Daniel. The gratitude in his eyes makes Rorschach's stomach hurt worse than the indigestable mass of his last meal. He turns away quickly, hovering to wash his hands. The movement makes his wings hurt like someone's stitching seams through them. Rorschach thinks something is wrong with the blood supply to them but he doesn't really care.

'Need a partner,' he says, looking at the pink water running over his long white fingers. 'Dangerous out there alone.'

'I don't think you're in any shape for patrol,' says Daniel.

Rorschach sets himself down, his wings won't hold out much longer, but doesn't turn to face Daniel. 'Have worked with Ozymandias before. Even Miss Jupiter might be willing. Knows Doctor Manhattan can manage alone.'

'I don't want a new partner.' Daniel is picking up the first aid kit, putting things away. Rorschach can hear the little clinks and rustles.

'Not about what you want,' says Rorschach. He spreads one white hand against the cupboard, it stands out too much and he has to make a conscious effort not to fade. 'About what you need.'

'I can't believe I'm hearing that from you! You cover all the mirrors, you barely come out of the guest room, you won't eat properly. You wait until I'm out of the house before coming downstairs most of the time, and if I do come in you try to camoflage yourself. But I'm the one who has to accept the situation?'

'Not the same.' He forces himself to look at Daniel, whose anger is already fizzling out. 'You can still be useful, do good, if you take care of yourself. No longer matters what happens to me.'

'Shit. You really believe that,' mutters Daniel. He looks at the ceiling, as if there might be something useful there, and then looks back. 'Okay. Try looking at it as a technical problem.'

'Technical?'

'Sure. Come here.' Daniel gets up and winces as the motion pulls his back, the local anasthetic is starting to wear off. He sits at the kitchen table, snags some paper and a pen. Rorschach joins him, kneeling on the other chair the difference in sizes doesn't feel as big. Daniel writes _advantages_ on one side of the paper and _disadvantages_ on the other, with a line down the middle.

'So, if you want to fight crime then why can't you?' he asks.

'Small. Weak. Clumsy. Useless.'

'Useless is a value judgement,' says Daniel, but he writes _small_ and _weak_ under disadvantages. 'Are you clumsy because you're not used to your body yet, or is it actually something about your body itself?'

'Both. Stiffer joints than a human's.' Rorschach isn't sure what the point of this is, it's certainly not making him feel better. Daniel writes _not used to body_ and _stiffer joints_.

'Okay, now we need some advantages,' he says.

'Don't have any.' Rorschach's body is tiny and useless, there's no possible way he could win a fight. Unless he stung the opposition maybe. 'Stinger,' he says. Although it might be fatal and he doesn't like having his only choices be killing or doing nothing. He never liked guns very much. Daniel writes _stinger_ under advantages, then adds _camoflage_ and _flight_.

'Can't fly very well. Wings give out,' says Rorschach.

'Only because you don't eat properly. You could fly perfectly well for the first couple of weeks,' says Daniel, adding _malnutrition_ under disadvantages.

'Five disadvatages and only three advantages,' Rorschach points out. Daniel responds by circling _not used to body_ and _malnutrition_.

'You can do something about those,' he says. Rorschach glares at him, suspecting this is just a ploy to make him eat properly. 'My point is you can still fight crime,' Daniel continues. 'But you're going to have to do it differently. You can't take criminals one on one anymore, you're right, you wouldn't be strong enough. But you can camoflage yourself and you know people hardly ever look up when they're checking an area, you could easily track people even if you had to leave the fighting to me. You're not useless.'

'Hurm.' Rorschach picks up the list and studies it. Daniel hasn't invented the advantages or played down the disadvantages. If he puts in some effort they'll break even, although the disadvantages will still have to be worked around. 'Will think about it.'

Upstairs in the guest room he pulls the blanket off the mirror and sits on the dressing table staring into it. The creature staring back at him is loathsome, a spidery parody of a man, but it's also him. The list is lying next to him and he taps _not used to body_ with one finger. If he can't accept his body he can't learn to use it and that makes being useless his own choice. Unacceptable. He will never be Walter again, his human self is dead, but he will find a way to be Rorschach.

The creature in the mirror is white, a colour chosen to make his hands stand out clearly against Daniel's skin. It would only take black blotches to make it Rorschach's colours. The thought makes him shiver, he doesn't deserve those colours after the full moon. Hasn't worn his mask since then. He can almost feel Rorschach, the real Rorschach, eying him from the shadows of the room. Angry with him for his presumption.

He leans forwards and takes deep breathes, fogging the mirror, becoming delusional isn't going to help matters at all. That would definitely go in the disadvantages column. Rorschach is him, there's no ghost haunting the shadows of the house. They're his colours, his uniform, and he has a right to them.

Black blossoms defiantly over his skin. Blotches are too large on his spindly body, the effect is too much like a lava lamp, so he thins the black to smoky shadows, like ink in water. Trailing around and over his limbs, it takes concentration to get the motion right, but never mixing with the white it flows through. Symmetrical around the line down the centre of his body, each swirl and ripple perfectly mirrored. After a while he doesn't have to concentrate on the motion, the body learns its new pattern and keeps it going.

When Daniel knocks on the door he answers 'come in' in a stronger voice than he's been using, never mind the grating buzz that can't be helped. Daniel stares.

'That's the creepiest, most beautiful thing I've ever seen,' he says. When he touches the side of Rorschach's ribs, Rorschach makes the black swirl around his fingers and doesn't pull away.


	5. Hunt

Dan watches the shadows carefully, is that a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye? Is that streetlamp reflecting off glass or eyes? The monster stalking him is deceptive, and turning his goggles to infra-red won't reveal the cold-blooded body either. Every shadow could be a lurking imp. When he reaches the end of the street he stops, looks back over his shoulder at the benign pools of light under the streetlamps and the ink black shadows outside them.

'Rorschach?' he asks the empty street. A shadow under the eaves of a house flickers to black and white, reveals an imp crawling along underneath a gutter with long fingers and toes wrapped securely around it. Copper eyes gleam down at him, and then the vision is gone in a blur of iridescent motion around the corner to the street ahead of him. Dan follows. The corner of a sheet of polythene waves from a pile of binbags. Or is it a transparent wing? With Rorschach's body the texture of black polythene, even staring down at the pile of binbags from less than a foot away, it's hard to make out the body curled among them.

'Found you,' says Dan, and the body flashes black and white, eyes gleaming up at him again. The mouth around the mandibles is almost stretched into a smile.

'Not hide and seek, Daniel,' says Rorschach. But it is. They're both keeping score, the times Dan has given up and called his partner's name, the times he's found him. The times he's got it wrong altogether and wound up saying 'found you' to a lilac bush. This is their first time out together, a short patrol through a fairly decent neighbourhood, more a confidence building exercise than anything. Dan doesn't know how it turned into a game, but suspects the gibbous moon above them of influencing things. Rorschach's inhibitions wane as the moon waxes.

Dan backs off as Rorschach gets up, even in a playful mood he hates being loomed over. It feels like Dan should look away and count to ten as Rorschach slips away. But it's not necessary, even trying to watch Rorschach's every motion he's gone before Dan can register it.

The sounds of shouting, swearwords and threats, brings him back in the blink of an eye. Dan didn't think they were on gang territory here, but knows the sounds of a brawl when he hears them. He's going to have to do something about it.

'Shadow me,' he says. It's a tactic they've discussed, camoflaged backup for the more obvious hero. There's no chance at all of Rorschach simply leaving this to him and he'd be insulted if Dan asked. Rorschach nods and blinks out, putting his success at hide and seek to real use now.

This isn't gang territory, but the two gangs facing each other are both trying to establish it as such. They give Dan the sort of look a poodle might get if it tried to intervene in a fight between alley cats. The first hit is a thrown stone, this is a knife fight and Dan hopes that means nobody brought guns. He's proved wrong when one man barks, 'Freeze, Owlie.' The gun is pointed straight at Dan's head, the gang members on both sides jeer and whoop when he does as he's told. A shadow flickers, there's a slight blur in the air, the gunman's down with the gun falling from his lax hand. A moment later, another blur, the gun is gone.

The gang members are moving closer to one another, rivalry forgotten. They are humans and things are lurking in the dark outside their circle, things which are other and dangerous. Things which cannot be seen. A cry splits the air like the wail of a banshee. High, wild, inhuman, and promising death. Tomorrow they will know it was a trick, some new technology and Nite Owl's crazy partner hiding in the shadows. Tonight they know it is a monster, something ancient and not understood that has prowled outside the firelight since ancient times. They scatter.

Rorschach drops down from the drainpipe he was holding and hands the gun to Dan. 'Easy,' he remarks.

Dan shoves the gun in his belt and bends down to check the gunman's pulse. It's rapid but strong, he's either paralysed or unconscious but he'll live. Dan drags him to a streetlamp to cuff him there. He'll call the police when they get home.

Dan thinks they've had enough excitement for one night, but Rorschach's sparking with energy. The black on his body is moving so fast it makes Dan dizzy to look at him and he flits around the living room in sharp bursts of motion, hovering in place for seconds before he's gone again. Dan makes honey and hot milk, hoping it will calm him down or at least make him sit still long enough to drink it.

After more than a month of confusion and despair it's perhaps not surprising that success would leave Rorschach almost drunk on it. He's babbling something about Irish legends and creatures that punished evildoers. Dan's always been more into classical mythology, and half the words are dissolving into chittering, so it's not surprising that he keeps losing the thread. He gives up and watches Rorschach instead. After a couple of weeks of eating all the sugary food he can get his hands on, and munching sugar cubes again as well, his skin has lost its stretched quality and thickened slightly and his wings once more fill the air around him with quivering reflections. The brilliant black and white of his colouring makes him stand out and fills Dan with the constant desire to touch. When Rorschach puts his mug down, after tipping it up to catch the last few drops, Dan decides that desire can be indulged.

He kneels in front of Rorschach and presses one hand against his stomach, black swirling around it in tacit permission. Rubs his hand up and down over Rorschach's ribs, leaving a smoky trail of black in its wake. The skin is smooth and slightly giving, it feels like latex and the thought makes Dan smile. He presses his lips to the sharp knob of one knee, and is rewarded with a gasp. When he kisses a trail down the inside of Rorschach's thigh the black makes a string of knots, unbraiding themselves in his wake. Suddenly Rorschach shoves him off, curls up tightly with his legs pressed together.

'Not full moon.' Rorschach sounds more pleading than anything. His body has betrayed him, going too far at a time when he didn't think it was possible.

'Close enough,' whispers Dan. He slides his hands between Rorschach's legs, gently opening them again and stroking down the insides with light touches. Rorschach's pincers are showing, just the tips, and as he relaxes they slide out. Dan presses his wrist into their maw and they snap shut, crossing over one another to hold his wrist in place. Dan flattens his hand against Rorschach's stomach, lifting the pincers away from the softness underneath.

Dan leans forwards, head between Rorschach's legs, and licks at the soft dome. It's sweet, almost like honey, and he gasps in surprise. Rorschach makes a keening whine which changes halfway through into his mating call, the wild ululating cry fills Dan's ordinary room. The black swirls on Rorschach's skin are edged with colour like St Elmo's fire, all the brighter for barely being there at all. Rorschach's tail snakes around Dan's neck, sting settling on his pulse point.

'Don't stop,' says Rorschach, his voice a chittering growl. And, as if this wasn't twisted enough already, Dan is on the verge of coming at the sound. He reaches down with his free hand, fumbling at his fly, Rorschach jerks his tail tight to remind him to keep going, and he comes inside his pants. Even through the hazy contentment afterwards he keeps on lapping and kissing at the sweet warmth against his lips, pulling Rorschach ever closer to the edge. His pincers grip so hard Dan can feel his wrist bones grind together and his tail slips from Dan's neck. He pulses colours, black and white dissolving, before he comes with a sharp cry, leaving sweet liquid dripping down Dan's chin.

Dan wipes his face on his shirt tail, all his clothes will be going in the wash, and slumps bonelessly against the couch. The closest part of Rorschach is his tail so Dan kisses it. It twitches away from him and he looks up to find Rorschach huddled in on himself. Guilt hits him for doing this to his friend, pushing him on a night when he'd actually been happy. He pulls himself onto the couch and wraps an arm around the shivering imp.

'What's wrong?'

'Wasn't the moon,' says Rorschach, hiding his face against Dan's side. 'I liked it.'

'Well, good. I'd be kind of hurt if you didn't.' That gets him a noise than isn't quite a sob and might even be a laugh.

'Threatened you.'

'I liked that, too.' And now it's Dan's turn to be embarrassed, looking at the ceiling instead of Rorschach. 'Um. You were actually kind of right when you called me a pervert.'

'Both of us, then.' Rorschach sounds resigned now, they both know this isn't the last time this will happen between them. Dan just wishes Rorschach could be happier about it.


	6. Rumours

Adrian Veidt doesn't believe rumours but he knows better than to ignore them. The word on the street says that Rorschach is dead and his ghost follows Nite Owl. Some say it is revenge, that Nite Owl failed to save his partner who now forces him to patrol nightly with only his shade as company, and Nite Owl looks pale and anxious under his cowl. Others say it is simply that Rorschach would not quit, not even in death, and Nite Owl patrols willingly with him, not letting death end their partnership. Some that it is Nite Owl's own doing, he somehow summoned his partner back from Hell itself and Rorschach follows him now in the form of a demon unable to go far from his partner and master.

All it comes to when the rumours are tracked to their beginning is a few criminals left drugged and disoriented. Tales of glowing eyes and blurs of motion. Unearthly screeching sounds. Nothing that needs the supernatural to explain. Rorschach has always had a flair for the dramatic, enjoying making himself a bogeyman to the criminal world, and Nite Owl has a bent for the technical. They're both immature, Rorschach with his stunted black and white world view and Nite Owl with his four colour comic heroes. This little ghost scheme is something he can imagine them cooking up.

Adrian Veidt doesn't ignore rumours. But he knows better than to believe them.


	7. Instinct

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter with the non-con.

Rorschach is hovering over the city, far above the dull yellow of the streetlamps. His wings are clouds of silver around him and his skin looks like moonlight and shadows. He feels part of the early autumn night, powerful and powerless all at once, light and sharp as the crisp wind.

The full moon shines above him, fuelling his restlessness. His body tells him he should fly, should search out a mate, and although he knows already where he will go the anticipation is worth savouring while he indulges the urge to be outside. Daniel will be waiting for him and Rorschach will slip through the window like a shadow to warm his cold bones against Daniel's flushed skin.

The ache in his groin tells him it's time and he flicks himself around in a swirl of reflected light. A wild ululating cry below stops him, the cadence subtly different from his own. Curiosity draws him down and something deeper. Although he wants Daniel he is pulled to the siren song of a female.

She is hideous, the way he is hideous, her body looks black in the moonlight and she hovers against the side of a skyscraper in the blundering manner of a cranefly. But she smells like honey, like orchids, like sex. Rorschach hovers near her, fascinated and repulsed. She runs a hand over his skin and the black swirls follow her without him thinking, it feels nauseatingly like betrayal.

'Beautiful,' she says, her voice a grinding hum. Her own skin changes to match his, swirl for swirl. Rorschach presses his hands to it, watches black pool around them. Pincers slip from his crotch with the sharp feeling of arousal and relief it always brings, and she moves to press her body against his.

'No,' he says. The tip of her tail is a long needle-like bone, she draws the tip of it teasingly down his leg. When he shoves her away she follows him, dips one hand to her crotch and smears it roughly across his face. Rorschach gasps in shock, inhaling the sweet wild scent of her. Can't remember why he wanted to resist.

Her body presses against his and his pincers snap shut around her narrow waist, all he can see is her wide amber eyes. It feels perfect, his pincers filled completely as they stretch around her. They both cry out at once, the different cadences making a discordant symphony. Her mandibles rub across his face, gathering up the sweetness she smeared there, and he groans at the sensation. Rubs his fingers up her spine, tickling at the bases of her wings. She pulses colours, humming encouragement at him. They rub together sending shocks of sensation through Rorschach's stomach and he starts pulsing colours of his own, gradually synching up with her until the colours they pulse match precisely.

She presses him back against the side of the skyscraper, pushing as if her body could sink right into his, and Rorschach cries his mating call into the curve of her neck. When he comes it takes him so hard that she's holding him up afterwards and she tows him to the top of the skyscraper to set him down.

It hits him then, with his pincers sliding back inside him and his body limp from orgasm, that he has had sex with a complete stranger and cheated on Daniel as well. He rolls onto his stomach and hides his face in his arms. The female strokes his back, murmuring praise vaguely as if she's done this before and sounding almost bored.

'This was your first time, wasn't it?' she says. 'It's okay. It's good, better than anything humans have. Just don't fight it.'

'Go away.' Rorschach doesn't care about curiosity anymore. 'Don't come near me again. Didn't want this.'

'You wanted it. At full moon we all do, and males are in short supply these days.' Her hand rubs circles on his spine the same way Daniel's does.

'Don't care.' It comes out a sob and he tries to pull himself together. Sits up and flicks his sting at her. 'Go.'

She hovers above him, looking down pityingly. 'I'll see you tomorrow night. You'll feel differently then, the true full moon is always best. Let go of thinking like a human. It only makes you unhappy.'

Daniel's window is open. Rorschach ignores it and flies back in through his own. Considers curling up under the duvet, but he'd still have to face Daniel in the morning. Daniel who he just cheated on, who he first violated and has now betrayed. He blunders down the stairs blinded by tears, guided by a different instinct now. The bottles under the sink are different shapes, but he can't find what he needs by touch alone and his tears make it hard to read no matter how often he flicks them away. The one marked 'Drano' is at the back, he squints as he makes out the label. Rorschach pulls it out. Thinks of whores and death and justice. What he deserves. The light flicking on turns the whole kitchen to a watery blur of light.

'Rorschach? I've been waiting for you half the night, where the fuck did you…' Daniel sounds angry and Rorschach cringes away. Then Daniel's footsteps speed up and the bottle disappears from Rorschach's grasp. Daniel doesn't know the significance of Drano, but can surely make a guess at why Rorschach wanted drain cleaner in the middle of the night. 'What happened?'

'Female. Mated like cats in heat. Pheromones and sick lust. Betrayed you.'

Daniel scoops him up and he goes limp, too miserable to even protest he doesn't deserve it as he's carried upstairs. Daniel sits him on the edge of the sink and a hot washcloth wipes away tears and snot as well of the remainder of what she smeared on his face.

'I doubt you had much of a choice,' says Daniel, gently. 'Instinct's pretty strong for you. I know you didn't do it on purpose.'

'Will happen again. She said. Tomorrow night.' Rorschach can see himself in the mirror, he's dull grey and looks as dead and empty as he feels.

'Stay inside,' says Daniel. 'I won't let…'

Daniel looks embarrassed by what he nearly said, never in their partnership has one tried to protect the other. But Rorschach is nothing now, a liability unable to control his own desires. He leans forward, hiding his face in Daniel's shoulder, and whispers, 'Thank you.'


	8. Hold

They sit on the bed, drenched in moonlight from the window, Rorschach on Dan's lap with his arms wound tight around Dan's ribs. He's the pale grey of a cast off cicada skin, small and trembling in Dan's arms. It's frightening to see his partner come to this. Rorschach's identity was already fractured, but before it was broken into lethal shards and now it's being ground into powder. How much more can he take before there's nothing left of him at all?

The autumn wind sighs around the house and the isolation Dan feels reminds him of horror movies. Or the dark heart of a fairy tale. The unearthly lover in your arms is being called away by his own kind. And if you don't hold on, if you fail him, then you will climb a mountain of glass and walk a road of knives before you have him in your arms again.

The cry from outside could almost be the wind, but Rorschach flinches and clings tighter. His breath is coming fast, even for a creature with a ribcage as thin as his, and Dan can feel his rapid heartbeat speeding to a hum. Such a fragile body, too small to hold all that Rorschach feels. Dan rubs his back soothingly and watches the window. The second cry is closer, high and wild, and Rorschach whines. Dan can feel hard pincers prodding at his thigh through his pyjamas.

Rorschach's own cry when it comes is choked and desperate but loud enough to make Dan's ears ring, his fingers dig hard into Dan's sides. The next cry from outside is closer still and rises at the end like a question. Dan holds his hand over Rorschach's mouth, feeling the uneven press of mandibles under his palm. Rorschach whines and shudders, starting to rut helplessly against Dan's leg. Then he bites hard into Dan's palm. Dan jerks back, blood running down his wrist, as Rorschach wails out another call. Dan grabs tissues from the bedside table, balls them up in his palm to stop the bleeding. But there are strips of flesh missing and the tissues soon soak through, like a crumpled red rose in his palm.

'I have to get the first aid kit,' whispers Dan. Rorschach focuses on him properly them, eyes coming back from the distance.

'Sorry,' he whispers, and when she calls again he presses his own long fingers to his mouth.

Dan fumbles bandages on, finding it hard to tie them one handed and with his left hand as well. The calling has stopped and his own breath sounds harsh in the silence. Calm before the storm, he thinks and feels his nerves tense to breaking point.

Back in the bedroom Rorschach is hovering by the window. For a moment Dan thinks the creature outside is his reflection, they're the same size and in the same pose. Hands, his left and her right, flat against each other through the glass. Both pulse the same colours to the same rhythm. The only difference is that where their tail tips rest against the glass hers ends in a thin bone spur and there are pincers at Rorschach's crotch. When Dan enters the bedroom they both turn towards him with the exact same motion, four lambent eyes regard him with inhuman intent.

Dan feels guilt as sharp as fear, he shouldn't have left Rorschach alone. He walks forward slowly under their eerie gaze and reaches out to touch the side of Rorschach's rib cage. The growling buzz of warning starts outside and then spreads to Rorschach, both tails move forward at once. Dan grabs Rorschach's quickly, left hand holding it below the sting, and presses it against the window.

'You're the one that didn't want this to happen,' he says. Rorschach's eyes are filled with light and Dan wills himself not to look away. Rorschach growls and shakes his head. A cool breeze brushes Dan's hand where in clenches his tail, the bottom of the window is open. The female drops her mirror impression and starts to slide it up. Dan wrenches Rorschach away and presses him against the wall, restraining him with his body. It leaves him with no hands free to stop the window opening.

Her scent fills the room. It reminds Dan of wildflowers, honey and vanilla. Rorschach goes stock still and then starts thrashing in Dan's arms, wrenching his tail back and forth. The female hovers on her back above Dan's bed, legs spread to show the moisture gathering in the soft folds between them. Rorschach wails, half mating call half scream, and then bites down hard on Dan's shoulder. Dan tries to hold him away with his left hand, but although he's not strong he's slippery. It's impossible to keep a grip on him and stop him biting. _They'll turn me in your arms, into a fire so wild. Hold me tight, don't let me go._ Tam Lin, thinks Dan, but he can't remember the next line.

Rorschach gags violently as Dan's blood runs down his throat, now he's heaving instead of struggling and Dan doesn't dare stop restraining him to let him find a more comfortable position. The colours are draining away from him, leaving him dead grey again.

'S-stop,' he chokes, but it's directed at the female and not Dan. 'Please. Go away.'

She moves over to hover by them, wings brushing against Rorschach's and making him whimper. Reaching past Dan she strokes Rorschach's cheek, crooning softly.

'You shouldn't fight it so hard,' she says. 'Lots of us feel this way when we first hatch, still confused and clinging to human feelings. But human social rules never stick well with us even as larvae, and you'll feel much better once you slough them off like you did your human skin. Following your instincts feels much better than denying them, and desiring a human is just a crush left over from your childhood. From when you looked like that as well.'

Rorschach is starting to look dazed again and Dan doesn't know what to do. Risk letting go of him to intervene or do nothing. Her fingers twine gently over Rorschach's face leaving a faint blush of changing colours in their wake. When she runs her index finger along Rorschach's lips he catches it in his mouth and them bites down and twists his head. Her finger snaps like a dry twig. She hisses and lunges at his face, trying to scratch out his huge eyes with her undamaged hand. Dan lets go of Rorschach to fend her off and Rorschach's sting hits her in the stomach. She falls but soon pulls herself to her knees and then surprises them by putting Rorschach's sting in her mouth and sucking, coppery eyes looking up at them full of reflected light.

'Don't you think we're immune to our own poison?' she says. Rorschach's whining, a softly pitiful sound, but she pulls away.

'I'm not in the mood anymore,' she says, showing her broken finger. 'You really are too much trouble, even for a hatchling.' And she's gone, back out the window in the blink of an eye.

Rorschach bandages Dan's shoulder with trembling fingers. 'Sorry,' he says. 'Bad. Hurting you. Shouldn't bother with me.'

'Don't,' says Dan, turning around to pull Rorschach onto his lap. 'It's not your fault. I think relationships like this are always hard on the human partner.'

Rorschach stiffens. 'Has happened before?'

Dan blushes and looks at the ceiling. 'Um. I guess I was thinking of fairytales. You know, the human partner always has to do things like hold on to their partner or not question them or not look at them after dark. And if they fail they have to climb a mountain of glass or empty the ocean with a seive or something. Um. I would, you know.'

'Sentimental, Daniel.' It's a relief to hear scorn in Rorschach's voice instead of miserable gratitude, even as both his hands wind themselves into the front of Daniel's shirt.

The third night of the full moon she doesn't come back.


	9. Wanting

Tonight Rorschach sits on Daniel's pillow, curled up tightly with his forehead resting on his knees and his tail wound around his shins. Daniel is next to him but they're not touching, not after last night. Daniel's hand and shoulder are bandaged, he went to the hospital earlier and they stitched his hand up properly. No nerve damage, he'll be fine, a little deeper and he could have lost the use of two fingers. Rorschach shouldn't be here, sitting on his bed, because if she comes back he won't fight on Daniel's side no matter how much Daniel fights on his. She won't come back, she said he was too much trouble, he's heard no mating calls tonight, she won't come back, but if she does what then? Rorschach is afraid to let her find him without Daniel nearby, more afraid of what she'd do to him alone than of what her presence could make him do to Daniel, and shame is a hot tight pain below his ribs.

The curtains are drawn tonight, only traces of moonlight seep around their dark edges, but Rorschach's body knows the moon is full. Effervescent desire thrills through him, mingling uneasily with shame and fear until his stomach is roiling with it. Daniel's scent is nothing like hers, not intoxicating or sweet. He smells of clean sweat and sandalwood showergel, of detergent and cotton pyjamas. Those scents are only alluring because they are his, because they mean Daniel, and they would be soothing if they weren't arousing him.

When Rorschach's pincers try to slip out he clamps his thighs together hard. Most of it is fear, his body betrayed him to her and he doesn't want to feel desire ever again. Doesn't want to be touched. Part of it is guilt, he cheated on Daniel one night and tore up his hand the next he can't bear to ask anything more of him than his presence. Even that is too much. Daniel stirs and sighs, smiles at him in the dark and even from the corner of one hidden eye Rorschach can see the tenderness in the curve of his lips. Rorschach's pincers try to come out and when he holds them in it feels as if they will push their way out through his guts instead. He presses a hand against the pain and can't hold in a soft whimper.

'You okay, buddy?' whispers Daniel, and there's no reason to whisper except that they're both afraid. There might be a monster out there in the dark, but there's a monster in here too and in movies that never ends well.

'Fine.' Rorschach grits the word out and Daniel leans over him, trying to see what's wrong. He's warm, radiating heat into the cold night air, and the warmth and scent and size of him make Rorschach feel surrounded even before he's that close. His nerves fizz with it, familiar haze of desire starting to wrap around his brain and blanket him against harsh reality. But he doesn't want it, doesn't want that dazed state in which he can't control himself, and tries to shake out of it. His pincers shove so hard against his insides that he doubles up, muscles slacken with shock and the pincers push their way out against his will.

Rorschach uncurls swiftly and presses himself face down into the bed, hiding his pincers against Daniel's mattress. 'Don't touch me,' he growls, sounding angry when it's not Daniel he's angry with at all.

'It's okay. I won't do anything you don't want me to,' says Daniel. And that's true, he knows it's true, but it's also not the problem. The problem is the things he does want Daniel to do, he wants to roll over and demand to be touched and held and completed. Sick, depraved creature that he is he drags Daniel into his desires. If only Daniel would say no, find the strength he lacks, but he insists on doing this for him and Rorschach can't control himself at all.

His pincers are stretching and closing, catching desperately at the mattress but unable to find anything to grip. He needs it so much it's hard to remember why he doesn't want it and he moans and writhes against the mattress. Daniel is so close, he needs him so much, he can't hold out like this. Grabs Daniel's uninjured hand with a sob and presses it between his own legs, pincers closing hard around the wrist.

'Sorry, Daniel, sorry,' he whispers.

'Shhh, it's okay. You know I like it,' Daniel says. His bandaged hand brushes the back of Rorschach's head and Rorschach pulls away from it, the only place they touch is Daniel's hand between his legs. Rorschach rocks against it and Daniel's fingers start rubbing gentle circles against his soft dome.

'Never. Never meant to hurt you,' Rorschach gasps, not sure why he wants to say this now except he needs Daniel to understand. 'Never meant…'

'I know.' Daniel's bandaged hand starts tracing the edge of his left wing and then it stops, fingers rubbing gently against a tear you have to be looking for to see. Just a little nick in the wavering edge where a knife once hit the newly grown wing. 'I know.'

Rorschach wants to be human again with a sudden desperation, wants his wings and tail gone, wants to be bigger. Wants it to be his cock Daniel's palming, to be an equal and not this pitiful monster.

'Fairytales,' he says, and now he's talking to hold back the mating call trying to vibrate his throat. She would think it an invitation if she was nearby, would never believe it's not for her. 'End with the monster becoming human. I'm not…'

'No, they don't,' says Daniel, leaning close to rest their foreheads together. Not afraid to look into the huge copper pools of Rorschach's eyes. 'In Arabian Nights people fell in love with Djinn and they never turned into humans. And in Finland you have Huldra and Valkyries. Elves in Germany and I bet some of the Irish ones you were talking about the other day as well.'

'Love?' He's talking, he realises, to stay himself through the haze of desire descending on him. Close to coming, afraid to let go, he picks out the one word in Daniel's speech that means something even with his mind half gone.

'I love you,' says Daniel, and he doesn't whisper it he says it aloud in the dark room and lets it sink in to the walls and the furniture and change the fabric of the world. Rorschach gasps as Daniel's fingers rub in time with the words and when he comes he can't hold back the ululating cry that's all for Daniel.

He freezes then, they both do, looking at the drawn curtains. Listening to the city and counting heartbeats, nothing calls back from the night outside. Rorschach feels giddy with relief, the room is swinging around him and he can't centre himself. He twists to hide his eyes against Daniel's thigh until everything stops spinning.

'You okay?' asks Daniel.

Rorschach doesn't answer, he feels like he's about to pass out but has enough pride left not to say that. He takes deep breathes for a while until things settle. 'Fine,' he says, although it's a few minutes now since Daniel asked the question. She's not coming back for him, everything has at least a chance of being okay.

'Good,' says Daniel, he moves down on the bed to lie next to Rorschach. Close enough for Rorschach to cuddle against him if he wants to, but with plenty of space if he doesn't. Rorschach opts to lie close by, not touching but sharing Daniel's warmth. It occurs to him that Daniel didn't come, but waves of exhaustion are already crashing over him and he's asleep before he can apologise for selfishness.

Rorschach wakes the next morning cuddled up as close to Daniel as he can get, head tucked in against his broad chest. Daniel's still asleep and it might disturb him if Rorschach pulled away, so he curls up and drifts off again to the sound of Daniel's heartbeat against his ear.


	10. Samhain

It's Halloween and Dan and Rorschach are out on foot, keeping an eye on the flow of children in masks forming eddies and whorls around the adults in their midst. Or they were, before the skies opened and poured water down over them sending children in soggy costumes home to eat candy in the warm and dry. Bucketing down may be a cliché, but it's accurate. The water falls in a solid stream as if the whole sky really is a giant upended bucket. Dan can barely see the pavement in front of him, let alone his camouflaged partner. He wonders if they should follow the trick or treaters' example and go inside, even the most desperate of criminals are unlikely to be out tonight and even less likely to find victims. The flash of lightning high over them settles it and he turns to look for Rorschach as thunder follows.

'Rorschach?' he calls. At first it seems there's no answer and then he catches the flash of white further back than he expected. Retraces his footsteps to his partner.

Rorschach is pale grey up close, not white as he first appeared. He hasn't been either black or white, much less both, for over a month now. He's clinging spiderlike to the wall, wings folded in close against his body. Dan leans in to speak to him and gasps. Close up the wings, normally silvery transparent, are mottled bruise colours.

'Holy shit, what happened to your wings?' asks Dan.

Rorschach cranes his head around to look at them. 'It's raining hard,' he says.

It is, the drops hitting the pavement with enough force to shatter and bounce upwards as tiny sprays of droplets. Dan hadn't realised Rorschach's wings were as fragile as that.

'I think we'd better head back,' says Dan. He reaches out, intending to scoop Rorschach into his arms where he can shelter him inside his cloak. Rorschach hisses and flicks his tail at him and suddenly colours appear on his body. Jagged, violent red markings around his eyes, down his spine and clustered thickly around the base of his sting. Warning colours.

'Don't touch me,' growls Rorschach, tail lashing with agitation. 'Just because you can pick me up doesn't mean it's okay. Doesn't mean I want you to.'

'Okay, man,' says Dan, backing away. A moment ago he would have sworn Rorschach wouldn't sting him, but those colours aren't something he's seen before. Better not to push. 'I still think we should head back, though.'

Rorschach considers and the red markings bleed away. 'Go on. Will follow.'

Dan goes and although he keeps checking behind him Rorschach is camouflaged again and he can't see him easily. It's only when the flash of lightning mercilessly illuminates the empty street that he realises his partner's no longer following him. Thunder drowns out the name he calls. For the second time that night he retraces his steps, not sure whether to curse himself or Rorschach.

When Rorschach doesn't answer his calls Dan's search becomes frantic. He checks alleyways, peers into boxes and digs through ancient trash. All he can think is that Rorschach went to look for shelter, too stubborn to ask for help he'd already rejected when he realised he couldn't make it back to the house. Dan should have grabbed him and risked being stung.

He finds Rorschach inside an abandoned refrigerator in an alley, door hanging slightly loose from perished rubber seal. Rorschach is curled into the fetal position in the bottom of it, stiff and still. There's something macabre about the pose, Dan feels his heart lurch into his throat. Pulls off a glove to touch and finds the skin hard and cold as marble. There's no pulse in Rorschach's throat. Dan puts a hand to Rorschach's mouth and can't feel breath. This is it then. After all they've gone through. This is it.

Dan lifts Rorschach into his arms and wraps his cloak around him, as if it would still do any good. The body is tiny and light, barely there at all. Like a sculpture in hollow glass. Dan's goggles are splashed with rain on the outside and tears on the inside, he has to push them up to see at all. The world blurs, rain and poor vision turning it into an impressionist painting. Dan walks through it, the only person in this unreal city, carrying the body of his partner home.

A puff of air against his neck makes Dan freeze, the world retreating further as his focus turns inward to his skin. It comes again, a barely there current of air. A breath. Gloveless fingers, stinging with the cold, reach under the cloak and seek a pulse again. This time it's there, a tiny flutter beneath hard skin. Dan's arms wrap tighter around the body in his arms, the person in his arms, and he runs. Feet throwing up spray, eyes straining through the streaky air, he runs towards the warmth of home.

Dan piles blankets on his bed and curls naked beneath the heap, Rorschach's cold body in his arms. His own body temperature, his own warm blood beneath skin pressed to skin, this is all he can offer now. Rorschach draws the heat in and leaves him cold, but he's softening slightly as he does. He's breathing now, his heart beat speeding up until it matches Dan's and then surpassing it. Rorschach moans, tries to flex his fingers. Dan cups them between his own, rubs warmth and blood back into them. Then Rorschach stirs, shifts his head to look at Dan, and Dan feels something cold lift off his heart. Feelings come back in a sharp welter, relief and fury battling to be first.

Dan pulls away, now Rorschach's heartrate and breathing are normal the central heating should stop him freezing again. 'Stay there,' he says, hearing the sharp edge to his voice like aural warning colours of his own. He needs to get away before he says something he'll regret. In the bathroom he leans on the sink and takes deep breathes. Shouting at Rorschach won't solve anything. Hitting him is right out, no matter how much the stubborn bastard deserves it. Dan is getting tired of nearly losing him.

There's witch hazel in the first aid cupboard, Dan takes it and a washcloth back into the bedroom. Pulls off the duvet and blankets roughly, tumbling them into a heap on the floor.

'Spread you wings out, please,' he says.

Rorschach obeys, but they don't even fit on the bed. He has to shift over and spread one out over the whole bed while he lies on the edge of it, even so the edges fold slightly over the side. Dan's motions are still sharp but his touch is gentle as he spreads witch hazel over the bruised wings. Once finished he goes back to the bathroom to put it away. He isn't that surprised when Rorschach follows.

'Am sorry.' It's offered stiffly, as if Rorschach thinks Dan is overreacting, and does nothing to assuage the simmering rage below Dan's skin.

'You should be,' he snaps. 'If you'd let me carry you in the first place you wouldn't have frozen to death.'

'Not dead, Daniel.'

'You were when I found you!' The words ring through the air between them, Rorschach staring at Dan in confusion. 'You were when I found you,' Dan repeats more softly. 'You weren't breathing, you didn't have a pulse. I'd carried you most of the way home before you started breathing again, I thought I was carrying your body. I thought…' But the last two words come out as a sob. Dan sinks to the bathroom floor as relief finally overtakes anger, bringing with it the memory of grief. He weeps and long fingers try helplessly to brush away his tears.


	11. Outsider

Laurie pauses under the eaves of a house to light a cigarette. It's starting to sleet and she's freezing in her stupid flimsy costume, goosebumps all over and she's pretty sure her goddamn nipples are visible. She should get a winter costume, tells herself that every year, but she's used to patrolling with Jon and he can always turn the air temperature up if she gets cold. Only tonight she's out by herself, air full of skeletal raindrops and pavement slick under her heels. She walks like a dancer, weight on her toes, and wishes for boots.

'Laurel,' the voice is rough and strange, it seems to come from everywhere around her and she strains her eyes into darkness flecked with orange reflecting on the sleet.

'Who is this?' Her voice is sharp and angry, not quite masking the quaver in it. She's a superhero, it should take more to scare her than horror movie bullshit.

'Nite Owl's hurt. Concussed. Help him.' The voice flickers uneasily up and down the scale, impossible to place the speaker's gender. It sounds like a low quality radio almost, a voice transmitted from another world. She's heard rumours.

'Rorschach?' Her voice squeaks on the last syllable. Men have been found paralysed, disoriented, unable to say what happened to them. What will happen to her if she resists?

'Yes. Walk left to the end of this road turn right. Second road on left after that.'

Dan, she thinks. Dan's hurt. It breaks through her paralysis and she starts moving, following instructions. There are reflections now and then too large to be flakes of sleet. A car goes past and headlights reflect off something ephemeral and wavering. Ectoplasm? But that was just cheesecloth, an easy thing for a medium to fake. Whatever she follows now is real.

Dan is lying on the ground, a thin sheen of melt water on his face. His cloak is wrapped around his head, there are traces of blood on it. He's cold. Laurie might be able to carry him, but not far.

'What now?' she asks the frozen city air.

'Carry him to an open space. Use controller to bring down airship.'

There's something wrong now with Rorschach's voice. Ridiculous thought, there's everything wrong with it. But it sounds forced, faded. Is he being pulled away to the land of the dead now his partner has help? Laurie pulls off her stupid heels, feet burning as they touch the pavement, and lifts Dan awkwardly onto her back.

'Go left.' And now the voice is barely there at all. Laurie carries Dan left and waits for more instructions that don't come.

Calling the owlship down isn't too hard, but she can't get it back in the air again. The controls make sense to Dan, she hopes, but not to her. She lays him on a narrow bed in the back and looks around for a first aid kit. There's something odd about the ship, beyond Dan's whimsy. The co-pilots chair is a high stool, looks as if it was designed for a child. There are jars of jam in the cupboard, a sticky mark on the cupboard door looks oddly like a long fingered hand. Laurie takes the first aid kit off the cupboard shelf and tries not to think of anything beyond treating head wounds.

It's a relief when Dan wakes, looks up at her with dark muzzy eyes. 'Laurie?' he asks. Then voice and gaze both sharpening at once, 'Where's Rorschach?'

'I don't know. He told me where you were, but I never saw him. Isn't he…um…dead?'

Dan stumbles to his feet, blinking from either concussion or poor vision. Laurie hands him his goggles and he pulls them on with a small smile of gratitude at her. 'I hope not,' he says grimly.

'If he's alive then why didn't he help you himself?' says Laurie. The anger in her tone is directed mostly at herself. Apparently a creepy voice is all it takes to make her think she's the heroine of a horror movie.

Dan hesitates, fiddles awkwardly with his goggles. There's something going on here, isn't there? Dan shakes his head and looks her in the eyes. 'Thank you,' he says. 'I'm okay now, you don't need to stay.'

But he looks unsteady on his feet and Laurie doesn't believe a word of it. 'I'll show you where I last heard him,' she says. 'I need to get my shoes back, anyway.'

Dan looks at her blue marbled soles and winces. Lends her boots and a few pairs of socks. She smiles, Dan is exactly the kind of superhero who would have spare socks on hand.

The place is empty, Laurie picks up her shoes and they swing from her fingers casting stillettoed shadows on the ground. The sleet has turned to freezing rain. She shivers as she watches Dan check doorways and alleys and search in dustbins and boxes as if his partner would even fit. At first she thinks it's a sign of concussion, thinks she should tell him Rorschach can take care of himself and drag him home. But there's the high seat in the owlship, the strange smear of jam that really was a handprint if she lets herself know it. The voice she heard that her gut knew wasn't human, and if Jon can exist then maybe anything can.

She finds the huddled creature in the gap between a warehouse and a fence. It's shrunken in on itself, curled up and skeletal. She's reminded of creatures mummified by desert sand. It's bright red, a beacon to draw attention, about the size of a child with long fingered hands. She kneels to draw it out, tugging it reluctantly into her arms.

'Is this him?' she asks and Dan looks up from the trash he's combing through, takes the monster eagerly into his arms and cradles it against his chest. Laurie doesn't think it's breathing but he doesn't seem alarmed, only hurries them back to the owlship. He drags an electric blanket from beneath the bed and swiftly wraps the goblin creature in it.

'What is he?' Laurie asks.

'We don't know,' says Dan, he's moving the owlship up as he talks. 'But thank you. For helping both of us.'

Dan is taking them back to his house. Laurie wonders if he should be driving with possible concussion, but it's not as if she could take over. The owlship is half landed when the creature stirs. It sits up stiffly, draggled wings starting to flutter around it. 'Daniel?' it asks.

'Right here, buddy,' says Dan. He turns from setting Archie down and smiles. There's a tenderness behind that smile so sharp it cuts, when their eyes meet Laurie can feel the connection as a physical jolt. She's young and beautiful and she sleeps with a god, but no one has ever looked at her like that. She doesn't think they ever will.

'So, thanks for the lift,' she says, suddenly breezy with the desperation to escape. She's the intruder here, only needed when they couldn't help each other.

'Oh, uh, do you want to stay for coffee?' asks Dan. Rorschach has faded to grey, but she thinks she sees the flicker of red markings for a second. Can guess that means he doesn't want her here.

'No, I'm fine,' she says. 'See you around.'

She makes for the tunnel entrance, behind her Rorschach calls for her to wait and she turns back to see him watching her. Grey again, she wonders why he isn't black and white.

'Don't tell,' he says, his voice makes it a threat. She puts her hands on her hips, draws breath. He ducks his head, tail flicking side to side with agitation. 'Please,' he growls.

Laurie sighs, meets Dan's eyes wide and melting with concern. 'Okay,' she says. She hurries off, behind her voices rise, one human and one not. She can't make out the words.

Laurie hurries through the night in borrowed boots, rain hitting her face like tears.


	12. Proposition

'Hey, Laurie? Could you come over to my house tonight? I'm sorry, I just…I really need someone to talk to right now.'

Dan's voice on the phone is choked and tearful, Laurie's first thought is of a small monster nearly weightless in her arms.

'Did something happen to Rorschach?' she asks, hears the electronic crackling as Dan shifts the phone.

'He was shot. He's okay, it was cold so his heartrate was slow enough that he didn't bleed out. It…he's okay.'

'I'll be there as soon as I can.'

Jon won't miss her. He's in the lab looking for quarks, his kind of truth and beauty.

It's snowing outside, the kind of light flakes that catch on every tiny hint of breeze and whirl upwards again before they settle. The world's like the inside of a snowglobe, beautiful and fragile. She gets a cab to Dan's house, staring out of misted up windows at the winter city. Dan's path is covered in a thin layer of snow like sugar frosting that crunches under her boots. She's wearing a long jersey dress with tights, her knees are cold as she stands there ringing the bell.

Dan's glasses are off. It gives his eyes a soft unfocussed look and there are teartracks on his face. Laurie shoves the door shut behind her and wraps her arms around his neck at once. He holds onto her as if she might dissolve at any second, or as if he might, and Laurie steers him into the living room and sits him down. She lets him cry on her shoulder, awkwardly pats his back. Comforting doesn't come naturally to her.

'What happened?' she asks softly.

'He was meant to stay in Archie,' says Dan. It takes Laurie a moment to realise he means the owlship. 'He hibernates. If it's cold his his body just slows down. I guess you know that, you saw him.' Laurie nods at the slight question in his voice. Dan reaches for the box of tissues, scrubs his face dry before continuing. 'I got into trouble. There were more of them than I thought, and then one of them drew a gun. I could…I could have got away. I could have handled it!' But he doesn't believe that himself. Fresh tears are already shining in his eyes.

'Rorschach came over to try and sting the gunman,' Dan continues. 'But it was cold, he couldn't move that fast and they saw him. I don't think the guy even aimed, just emptied his whole clip in a panic, but one of the bullets got him and I thought…' Dan's sobbing again and Laurie goes back to hugging him. He's warm and human and right now he needs that from someone else. 'He was meant to stay in Archie,' Dan repeats softly.

'From the sound of it you might be dead if he had,' says Laurie.

'I could…yeah, maybe. I just. He keeps doing this. The first time he went into hibernation I thought he was dead, I'd carried him most of the way home before I knew he wasn't. And when he changed I thought…I didn't know it was him. He crawled out of the inside of his own body. And he wouldn't take care of himself at first, and then he nearly commited suicide and I still don't really understand that. He just keeps…'

'Talking behind my back, Daniel?'

They both jump, turn to see Rorschach watching from the doorway. He's clinging to the doorframe with both hands, holding himself upright by sheer will. Bandages wind across his chest, carefully wrapped to leave his wings free. Standing in the space between the dark hall and the light of the living room, wings catching and diffusing the light around him, he looks like the ghost of an emaciated child. Laurie is not a maternal person, she is especially not maternal towards giant bugs, but for a moment she just wants to wrap him in a blanket and feed him a nourishing meal.

'Come in here and sit down before you fall,' she says.

Rorschach obeys, making his way awkwardly to an armchair and climbing into it. Once there he flops down like a puppet with its strings cut, head lolling on one arm of the chair. The only motion is his tail twitching feebly against a chairleg. He looks so small.

'Miss Juspeczyk,' Rorschach says. 'Would like to propose that you partner with Daniel until spring.'

'Rorschach, I don't-' begins Daniel but Rorschach cuts him off, softly exhausted voice more effective than shouting.

'You need a partner. Could have been killed tonight, better if you had backup capable of functioning in cold temperatures.'

'I don't want to partner with fucking Laurie, okay?' Dan shouts and Laurie shoots up from her place on the couch beside him, turning fast enough for hair to slap her face and slip into her mouth. She flicks it back with one hand.

'Fine,' she snaps. 'I'm outta here. You can find another shoulder to cry on.'

But something catches at her skirt before she reaches the door and when she looks down Rorschach is holding the jersey fabric in one pale fist.

'Problem is not you,' he says. His eyes are fixed on hers as if holding her gaze will make her understand. The fist holding her skirt is trembling slightly, she can feel the effort he puts into reaching out. 'Suggested you as a partner for Daniel before. Early on. Was adjusting badly then. Harming self. Daniel worries.'

'You've given him a lot of reasons to,' says Laurie, it comes out gentler than she intended. Reminded of what Dan told her earlier it's easy to feel sympathy for both of them. Dan's rejection of her wasn't personal, only intended as a refusal to replace Rorschach.

'Hurm. True. Felt useless then. Am useless now. But aware it is only temporary.'

'You're not useless,' says Dan. 'You've been providing backup from Archie, you can still do detective work and help me with tactics. We don't need anyone else.' He glances at Laurie. 'Sorry. It's nothing against you personally, maybe we should have this conversation some other time.'

'Would prefer you to have backup on the ground,' says Rorschach.

'Look,' Laurie interrupts. 'Maybe you should have this conversation when I'm not here. But since I am here I'm going to answer Rorschach's question.' She looks down into earnest orange eyes. 'No, I won't work with Dan until spring. I'll work with both of you. You needn't think you're getting four months off just because you've found yourself a replacement.'

Laurie's used to reading Jon's expressions, it's the only reason she notices as Rorschach's lips twitch into the closest thing to a smile his mandibles will allow. 'Understood,' he says. 'Doubt you've been properly trained in detective work anyway.' He lets go of her skirt, apparently convinced she's given up on storming out. 'Will need more practical uniform as well.'

'I'll adjust it,' answers Laurie. 'The last thing Dan needs is another partner too stubborn to avoid freezing to death.'

Dan finds his glasses and cleans them before putting them on. He makes them all coffee but by the time it's made Rorschach is asleep in the armchair and Laurie is guiltily indulging her curiousity by taking a close look at him. His wings feel like fine silk under her fingers and they're beautiful whatever the rest of him looks like. The face is just human enough to make its features truly hideous instead of merely alien, but there's something compelling about the huge round eyes.

'I'm really sorry for snapping at you like that,' says Dan, handing Laurie her coffee. 'Rorschach's right, the last time he suggested I replace him he said it wouldn't matter if he died. It scared me when he brought it up again.'

'It's okay,' says Laurie, rejoining him on the couch. She looks at the sleeping creature in the armchair, creepy yet fragile, and realises she's more afraid for Rorschach than of him. Is it turning into a goblin that's left him so vulnerable, or was he just able to hide it before? Dan looks at Rorschach too and there's that fierce tenderness in his eyes again. Laurie can feel the love stretched between them like strands of molten glass, she's almost afraid to get close to feelings as strong as theirs. But neither can she pull away having come this close. They need each other and she'll always be on the outside of that, but right now they also need a friend. Maybe she needs a friend, or a couple of them, as well.

'Thanks, Laurie,' says Dan, squeezing her hand, and unwittingly echoes her thought. 'You're a great friend.'

'Yeah, well,' she says, thinking of Jon staring at things too small to see or too big to comprehend and missing all the person sized bits in the middle. 'I don't have anything better to do.'


	13. Mission

Ringleader is a smalltime villian, just one of the maggots wriggling out from the headless corpse of Big Figure's organisation. He's just smart enough to make his airvents too small for a human to fit through, and it's not a human that's crawling through them now. Rorschach's wings are tight against his back, they're bleeding slightly from wriggling through some of the smaller pipes but right now that's just a reminder he's out of the house, out of the owlship, and doing something useful. Right now it's Daniel's turn to wait and worry, keeping in contact through the tiny radio on a transparent collar around Rorschach's neck. There's another gadget like a miniature swiss army knife hanging from it as well and a floppy disk beside that. The floppy disk is the only thing big enough to compromise his camouflage, but it's unavoidable.

It's snowing outside but there's central heating in here, Rorschach's wide awake and buzzing with energy. Sharp happiness bubbles through him and half of it's the full moon tomorrow heightening all his emotions. Half of it's purpose.

The computer room is guarded by two men with guns. The air vent opens almost directly over one's head. It makes the next bit risky, but will be convenient later. Activating the miniature laser that is one of his army knife's functions makes Rorschach feel like a cross between Alien and James Bond, there's a monster in the air ducts with cool gadgets and it's one of the good guys. It cuts through the joins on the grating of the vent and Rorschach slowly and carefully lifts the grating aside.

He drops out of the airvent and spreads his wings, pressing up against the ceiling and matching its colour. Neither of the men below him show any signs of noticing. One shifts, scratches his nose. Rorschach shifts his position by inches, trying to keep his wings as flush to the ceiling as possible while still rippling them enough to stay airborne. His sting whips down and up quickly, the man below him crumples. His companion turns, looking around frantically and reaching for his radio. By the time he thinks of looking up Rorschach's sting is already whipping towards his face. He throws up his arm and the sting sinks into his wrist, leaving him in a heap as well.

Rorschach cuts the lock on the door and slides it open fractionally. One woman inside, typing something. Looks like a secretary, but one with very high clearance if she's allowed here. The room is circular, a bench with computers on it running around the room. Rorschach slips under the bench, edges around until he can sting her shin and watches her slide off the chair. Reaches up to toggle the radio at his neck as he takes her place in front of the glowing monitor.

'I'm in. Three people down. Two guards one secretary. Secretary had computer accessed.'

'Good. Are you okay?'

Rorschach shakes his head. They only have a few hours at most, if anybody notices the guards they have considerably less, and Daniel wastes it on questions like that. 'Fine. Listen.' Rorschach reels off the information on the screen and Daniel directs him to the folders they want.

'Won't open at this clearance level,' Rorschach says.

'Okay. We'll have to hack it. Listen carefully.'

Rorschach follows instruction meticulously, relaying information back to Daniel at every turn. It's a frustrating process, made more so by not understanding what he's doing, and every noise sounds like footsteps from the hall. The floppy disk in finally in and half downloaded when the footsteps really come.

'Someone coming,' he hisses into the radio, a warning for Daniel to be quiet. Rorschach floats to the ceiling and moves across to hover above the door. He twists his head to keep an eye on the monitor, he has to buy enough time to finish the download. The crackle of a radio comes from outside, a man's deep voice. The secretary's lying on the floor where he left her, still not stirring.

80% done and there are heavy boots stomping down the corridor. Four people moving in unison. The scrapes on Rorschach's wings are scabbing over, stiffening, he hooks his tail to poise his sting over the doorframe. 85% done.

The first man pushes open the door cautiously, moving his gun ahead of him. He's wearing a helmet, Rorschach has to angle around to hit the back of his neck above his collar. The manouvering splits the scabs and he speckles the gunman with blood. The others behind him stop, looking around for a sniper that isn't there. 92% done.

There aren't any windows in this room and he can hold the door. Perfect defensive position. It's leaving that's going to be the difficult part. 96% done. A sound like a thundercrack and he realises a moment later that a bullet went past his ear. Whether or not they know what he is they guessed someone was above the door. He drops away as the next one tears through where his head had been. A moment and they'll charge through the door. 99%. 100%.

The door breaks down and Rorschach flits to the computer as bullets snap through the air around him. One grazes his tail, leaving a line that burns like fire, but he gets the disk before going to ground under the tables. Clips it back into place on his collar with a deep sense of satisfaction. He skitters along under the tables on all fours, tail curled over his back like a scorpion's. The cut in it stings and he's badly outnumbered and outgunned, but he feels sharp and powerful. Alive. His body is a tool, a weapon, and not a trap. A savage grin stretches his lips, large mandibles curving out and up while the smaller pair pull down, sharp edges of all of them exposed and ready.

A gunman kneels to look under the table, revolver following his line of sight. Seeing Rorschach freezes him for one vital second and Rorschach's sting manages to flick under the wrist of his gauntlet and scratch through skin. Rorschach grabs the revolver from hands going rigid, guns aren't his prefered weapon but he knows how to use one. He knows where the trigger is at least.

Bullets tear through the table where he was seconds ago as he scuttles for the door. There's less gunfire than there could be, a lot of valuable equipment in this room. Rorschach crouches, starts shooting a straight line from here to the door. The men scatter, he knows they're counting bullets. The revolver holds six, on the fourth Rorschach drops the gun and flies for the door. His camouflage makes him a blur above their heads, they've barely seen him before he's gone. Back into the air ducts, obvious but the corridors around the computer room are full of summoned guards.

Rorschach toggles on his radio. 'Trouble. Meet at roof.'

He doesn't give Daniel time to answer before he's moving, it's only a matter of time before they think of a way to trap him in the ducts.

The grating on the roof with its carefully cut through padlock is heavily guarded now. Ten gunmen. Rorschach can hear movement below him, grinding metal. They can't reach him but someone is shutting off his way back down.

'Daniel,' he says into his radio. 'Am at roof exit.'

'Stand back from it and cover your eyes,' says Daniel.

Rorschach obeys, backing away from the grating and curling into a ball, pressing his arms over his huge lidless eyes. The heat from the owlship's flamethrowers contrasts with the winter cold dragging his body down.

'Now,' barks Daniel. Rorschach runs as fast as he can manage in the cold. The grating is glowing dull orange still but Daniel is there with fireproof gloves to lift it aside. Laurie stands inside Archie's doorway, bare feet away, and pulls them both in hastily as the guards gather themselves back together to attack.

Then they're away, mission accomplished, and Rorschach slaps the disk triumphantly into Daniel's hand.


	14. Confidence

Dan takes them up above the heavy snowclouds to where the stars shine clean and cold. The moon is nearly full a sliver pared away from its edge. He puts the disk down and turns around, there's a cut in Rorschach's tail he wants to clean and bind. Rorschach is crouched on the floor, an empty jam jar next to him. When he sees Dan looking he meets his eyes with bright copper ones, slides his whole hand into his mouth and slowly sucks off the jam. Dan stares, not sure if that was intentionally flirtatious. Rorschach drops to all fours and stretches still holding his gaze, it starts at his head curves its way through his spine and ends at his tail. Shadows are moving oddly on his body, grey on grey, and he seems to be getting brighter.

When his colouring suddenly resolves into black and white the effect is startling, he's practically glowing against Archie's floor. Laurie says 'woah' softly and Rorschach looks at her with a small smile and cocked head, body shifting subtly towards her. And, god, he is flirting. With Laurie no less.

'Rorschach?' asks Dan. The next sentence was going to be 'are you alright' but he never gets the chance to say it. Rorschach flicks himself across the room and into Dan's chest with enough force to shove him back against the wall. Long hands slide up under Dan's cowl, pushing it back to run through his hair, and then pulling off his goggles as well. Rorschach rests his forehead against Dan's, filling Dan's vision with gleaming copper. His feet rest on Dan's hips, hands start unfastening Dan's costume at the shoulders, dipping under, cold against Dan's skin, ready to peel it down.

It's not as if Dan minds, he's aching for this already, but they're not alone here. And the moon isn't even full, Rorschach never initiates unless it is.

'Rorschach,' he gasps. 'Wait. Laurie…'

Mandibles, sharp as knives, suddenly pinch his carotid artery. Gentle, they're not breaking the skin, but he remembers the mess they made of his hands. 'Quiet, Daniel.' The command buzzes against his neck, Dan's throat is dry but he doesn't dare swallow. Rorschach won't hurt him, he knows, but he's lost all will to try and make him stop.

His erection is pressing painfully against the inside of his suit and Dan reaches free it. Rorschach lifts his body away and up while Dan strips his costume off, hovering parallel to the ground but maintaining the light pinch against Dan's throat. When Dan is naked he gives a little hum of pleasure and slowly, languidly, fits himself against it. His black and white patterning is whirling dizzyingly in contrast, little sparks of colour playing across it. Cold, he's cold but warming fast. Absorbing and reflecting the heat of Dan's skin.

Rorschach's legs wrap around Dan, feet meeting in the small of his back, and his pincers close around the top of Dan's left thigh. His tail flicks twice around the other thigh, squeezing as hard as the pincers are, and his sting runs down the underside of Dan's cock and starts flicking against his balls.

Dan gasps and tips his head back, dizzy with how turned on he is. If infiltration turns Rorschach from a fragile half-broken creature to this feral demanding monster he will find a reason for them to infiltrate every gang base in New York.

When Dan tries to touch himself his hand is caught between Rorschach's hands and pressed down between Rorschach and his thigh. A faint growl, the sting pressing in just a little harder as it fondles his balls, and the command is clear. Dan starts fondling Rorschach, feeling heat and wet against his palm, reaches down his other hand for himself only to be stopped again.

Rorschach's mandibles let go of his neck only to transfer themselves to his wrist, holding his free hand away from his straining cock. Dan remembers the strips they tore from his palm and he should be worried. Looks at Laurie and she's standing, staring, eyes dark with lust. Rorschach's patterning is dissolving into bands of colour, both of them see Dan's naked body. Both of them want him. The thought sends still more blood to Dan's cock and he's gasping.

'Rorschach, Ror…please. Please.'

Rorschach's mating cry rings through the cabin, there's a note of triumph in it he hasn't heard before. A bugle challenge to anyone who might want to take what's his. He presses harder into Dan's hand, demanding the touches he denies Dan, and comes with a banshee howl of pure glee.

He looks up at Dan, copper eyes surrounded by moving black and white and fading echoes of colour. Lifts Dan's hand, still wet with Rorschach's come, and wraps it around Dan's cock. It barely takes a stroke and then Dan's coming, harder than he ever has in his life, slipping to his knees in the aftermath while Rorschach disentangles himself.

When Dan can move again he looks over at his partner, he's expecting a breakdown. Apologies for threatening him, for pushing him into sex in front of Laurie. But Rorschach's curled up on the floor radiating smug contentment, pattern stilling as he drifts into sleep. Laurie's still standing by the control panel, Dan feels like a should apologise but he's feeling too good to muster any embarrassment and just offers a weak grin.

Laurie looks away and lights her pipe. 'Well, fuck,' she says. 'I didn't know bugs could be so sexy.'


	15. Wake

Dan's reading the newspaper when Rorschach crawls up his legs onto his lap, inserting himself firmly between the paper and Dan. He's been doing this a lot lately, acting in a way that straddles the line between affectionate and possessive in an almost feline manner. Dan looks into the copper eyes that have suddenly appeared inches from his own and smiles.

'Where are my things?' asks Rorschach.

Dan's mind is still half on an interesting article he was reading in the Countryside section so he answers rather absently, 'What things?' and then winces because Rorschach really does own absolutely nothing.

'Things in my pockets.' Rorschach's tail taps Dan's shin, not a threat just a reminder to pay attention to him.

'What pockets?' asks Dan, looking bewildered at the naked imp in front of him. Rorschach growls in frustration.

'Coat pockets. You disposed of the…thing. Threw away coat without checking pockets?'

The thing, Dan thinks, because what else can you call it? Not quite a body when Rorschach's still alive. He can still see it on the kitchen floor behind his eyes, a bloody crumpled thing. The brain and spinal chord had ripped out of it, migrating to Rorschach's new body, leaving something like a mangled shell of meat.

'I kept the coat,' he says. 'It's in the basement.'

The coat had been on the floor beside what Dan hadn't quite been able to stop thinking of as his partner's body. He'd grabbed it, rolled it up tightly without washing out the streak of blood down the back of the lining, and later he'd shoved that and Rorschach's fedora behind a stack of boxes, not sure if Rorschach would be comforted by their presence or distressed. Either way they were too much a part of him, of Dan's image of him, to throw away without it feeling like a betrayal of the fact that Rorschach was alive.

The mask had been a different matter, he had known Rorschach would want that. Had peeled it off a face caved inwards until it was nothing but splinters of bone and blood. That was the first time he saw his partner's face.

They go to the basement. The cold weather has made Rorschach reluctant to fly unless he has to, the more his wings are spread the more heat he loses. Instead of his stiff tottering gait on two legs he moves on all fours now, somewhere between a bound and a scuttle. There's a sharp confidence in his movements, he knows his body's capabilities, and if he looks fragile now it's only the way a thin knife blade is fragile.

Dan shows him where the coat is, a rolled up bundle with the fedora perched on top. Rorschach pulls it out and surprises Dan by bending to sniff it and hurming deep in his throat. He picks up the fedora and turns it in his hands before slipping it onto his head. It still fits and there's something freakishly endearing about the brim pulled down over eyes like lamps.

'You look adorable,' Dan says grinning.

'Am not adorable, Daniel,' says Rorschach. 'Very intimidating monster.' But he's hiding a smile when he takes the hat off.

Rorschach turns the contents of his pockets out onto the floor. Sugar cubes, a map of the subway which isn't going to be much use to him now, a few newspaper clippings, a piece of string, a biro, and his leather bound journal which he picks up eagerly. Dan watches him flip through it deftly, his finger joints really are stiffer than a human's but it doesn't seem to bother him anymore.

'Did not read?' he says.

'Of course not,' says Dan. 'You know I can't read your handwriting.'

The notes written for Dan back when Rorschach was having trouble speaking had been painstakingly printed, when Rorschach writes things intended only for his own eyes his writing always devolves into a thoroughly illegible scrawl.

Rorschach settles on the floor, takes up the pen and starts writing. His pose, hunched over the journal deep in thought, is familiar but not in this body. Dan leans against the wall and watches him.

Back then he'd taken the body, the shell, whatever you wanted to call it, to a pet cemetery and broken into their crematorium. Unlike a human crematorium they didn't always cremate the bodies separately and extra ashes could go unnoticed. He wasn't sure if it was a good place to dispose of the human remains of a non-human creature, appropriate or sickeningly ironic or just practical. He'd stood and watched smoke drift into the sky and whispered the Kaddish out of his own sense of mourning, the loss of the partner he had known. The loss of a silhouette in a trenchcoat leaning at the end of an alley, the loss of a gloved hand on his shoulder supporting him.

Now when he thinks of Rorschach the thought comes with a small sharp body, with mandibles and a sting. Eerie beauty like a wasp or dragonfly. Now the regret of never seeing his partner's human face is tempered with gratitude for how well he knows this one.

'Come on, it's too cold down here to sit and write,' says Dan. 'Let's go back to the living room.'

Rorschach flies this time, holding the pen and journal in his hands, and hovers until Dan sits down again. Dan picks up the newspaper again, only for Rorschach to slip into his lap from above this time. He pulls his journal out and starts writing, not making any attempt to hide the words. Dan finds it hard to read his chickenscratch but he makes out the words 'strange transformation' and 'Daniel's kitchen'. He tucks Rorschach against his chest so he can read the newspaper around him and smiles. Clearly Rorschach has a lot to write about while he catches up to the present.


	16. Christmas

It's dawn a few days before Christmas and heavy snowflakes are falling through a gold and pink washed sky. The view through the owlship windows looks like the end of It's a Wonderful Life as they hover in a warm cocoon over the city.

'We should have a Christmas party,' says Laurel. She looks at Daniel. 'Or a Hanukkah party. Or just a party to celebrate days getting warmer again, we've got a reason to celebrate that.'

She's looking out the window past him when Rorschach turns to look, cheeks flushed with cold and excitement from the fight she and Daniel only recently won. The two of them stumbled into Archie together, elated and laughing, Daniel's hand between Laurel's shoulderblades, snowflakes melting on their cheeks. Rorschach pops a sugar cube into his mouth and it makes a scrnch scrnch noise as his mandibles grind it. When he leans forwards over the control panels he can look down and see the light spangled city below. Rampant consumerism, shops using fairylights to lure in shoppers like an anglerfish, but for all that the view is beautiful. His city is a whore, but she looks good in her Christmas dress.

'Would be frivolous reason to miss patrol,' he says, regret tinging his voice. He hasn't celebrated Christmas since Charlton.

'It would only be one night,' says Daniel. 'I'd like it, a party I don't have to feel awkward at for once.'

'One without any government officials or diplomats,' says Laurel.

Rorschach hesitates then slowly nods. 'One night,' he says quietly.

Laurel leaves them to walk home. She still wears her silly yellow dress, flimsy and pretty, but the bodystocking underneath could probably keep her warm in the arctic. It does nothing to hide her body, though, and manages to be indecent even while covering everything up. Rorschach settles into his seat and wraps his tail around his legs. He can't approve of Laurel; not her smoking or swearing, the way she talks, the way she dresses. The way she gets close to Daniel, the way Daniel likes it when she does. No, he doesn't approve of her at all. But he's still, if he admits it, looking forward to spending Christmas with her.

Daniel and Rorschach put decorations up the next day. Daniel compromises on what they are actually celebrating by not getting a tree and just winding fairylights and tinsel around the room. Rorschach puts them up, hovering is easier than using a stepladder, but Daniel sorts them out when they suddenly stop working. Once the room looks properly festive Daniel makes them hot chocolate and they sit on the sofa with the room lights off, admiring their handwork. The coloured lights reflect on Rorschach's skin and leave pastel smudges on his wings.

'Did you enjoy Christmas when you were a kid?' asks Daniel, studiedly casual, and Rorschach's relaxed enough to answer honestly.

'Yes. But not what you imagine. Was raised in a Home.' He leans against Daniel companionably, the darkness and soft lights lend the room a confidential air. 'Christmas was good. Better food, games. A big tree in the hall, a real one. Looked very grand. Carols in church. People would donate old toys and games. Second hand books,' he adds the last nostalgically remembering favourite stories he'd gained that way. 'Always enough for a present each. Probably doesn't sound like much to you.'

'No, it sounds...it sounds nice,' says Daniel. 'I'm glad your Christmases were happy.'

'They were,' Rorschach assures him softly. 'This one will be too.'

Laurel arrives with a box of chocolates, candy canes, a stack of records and a slightly defiant air, as if she thinks it might be wrong of her to enjoy herself but is determined to do so anyway. She's wearing a slinky gold dress which Rorschach disapproves of on sight.

'Quit glaring at me,' says Laurel. 'It just looks silly when you're halfway through a candy cane.'

'Very inappropriate dress,' says Rorschach. 'Low neckline and no back, makes you look like a slut.'

'I can't believe I'm hearing that from someone who's naked,' she snaps.

'Perfectly appropriate naked,' says Rorschach. 'No lewd features. Lack nipples or navel, everything else hidden without need for clothes.'

'Right,' says Laurel. 'And the time you screwed Dan in front of me?'

There isn't any answer to that. He'd been flying high on elation and adrenaline, the full moon had been close, his instincts had urged him to claim his mate in front of a possible rival, and none of those excuse his behaviour at all. Daniel rescues him by asking Laurel to put some music on, and she goes to do so with a smirk. Rorschach's expecting Christmas music, but the lyrics that drift outward from the gramophone are '...come on let's crawl, to the ugly bug ball...'

'Laurie!' says Daniel, and puts his face in his hands. But Rorschach snorts laughter round the end of his candy cane. Laurel grins at him and grabs his hand. 'C'mon, dance with me,' she says. Rorschach is too bemused to resist for a moment and then gives in willingly, spreading his wings and floating to her eye level. He can't dance but he's weightless in the air and goes where she pulls him, letting her twirl him about. Daniel laughs and changes the record for actual Christmas music before joining them. It's silly but sort of fun all the same and it's easy to enjoy the simple acceptance by two people who don't care that he's an imp. Then a slow dance comes on and Laurel surprises him by trying to pull him into her arms, the touch of her breasts against his skin is enough to send him diving out of her arms and into the safety of Daniel's.

'I was just being friendly, there's no need to act like I'm a leper,' says Laurel, looking at him with something behind the anger he can't place. 'Damn it, I need a smoke.'

She storms outside, although she doesn't normally have any compunctions about lighting up wherever she happens to be. Rorschach watches her go, uncertain whether to be angry with her or sorry.

'I'll go and get her,' says Daniel, giving Rorschach a squeeze before putting him on the sofa.

'Don't care whether she comes back,' Rorschach mutters, not quite truthfully.

But she comes back in with Daniel, still looking a little annoyed but apparently willing to let bygones be bygones. Dinner, which has been keeping warm in the oven, is roast beef which Daniel ordered from a catering firm rather than trusting his cooking skills. It's not a huge meal, since it will only be eaten by Daniel and Laurel. Rorschach picks up the chocolates Laurel brought instead. The first one is delicious but somehow sharp and he picks up the lid to see what it was.

'Liquor chocolates. Alcohol, Laurel?' he demands.

'Oh, don't be so dramatic,' she answers. 'They're chocolates, nobody could possibly get drunk on them.'

'Really,' says Daniel. 'You'd probably be sick before you were drunk.'

The chocolates are nice enough that Rorschach accepts their assurances and digs into them happily. Daniel and Laurel discuss funny stories from past missions, which seem to get funnier as the meal wears on.

'So how did it happen?' Laurel asks later. 'The turning into a bug thing?'

'He's not a bug,' Daniel starts, but Rorschach interrupts. He's feeling warm and a little fuzzy around the edges, but very friendly towards them both. Laurel is his friend, she deserves an answer.

'Was very surprising,' he says. 'Planning a mission in Daniel's kitchen and he said I was bleeding. No pain but...blood...everywhere.' He waves his hands to indicate and Daniel quickly rescues his wineglass. 'Lots and lots of blood,' he continues. 'Daniel started taking clothes off.' He pauses. 'My clothes, not his. That wouldn't have helped. Would have been nice though.'

'Here, give me those,' says Daniel, reaching for the chocolate box.

Rorschach fends him off with an arm. 'Am eating them.'

'You've eaten enough,' says Daniel. 'I think you're drunk.'

'Not drunk. You said I wouldn't be.' Rorschach tries to grab the box as Daniel pulls it away and frowns when he misses.

'I may have overestimated your alcohol tolerance,' says Daniel. 'And I wasn't expecting you to eat half the box either, I'd forgotten how much sugar you can eat at a sitting.'

'You said,' argues Rorschach.

'Go on with the story,' says Laurel. 'You'd just got to Dan not taking his clothes off.'

Rorschach stares at her in confusion until Daniel takes pity on him. 'You'd just got to me taking your clothes off,' he corrects.

'Oh. Daniel took clothes off and there was blood on them, but still didn't feel anything. Then when shirt came off he found a huge split, right down spine. Was very scary, didn't know why I couldn't feel it. Thought I might be dying.' He shudders at the memory. 'Then...then it was dark and red and my eyes hurt.'

'Why, what happened?' asks Laurel, flatteringly agog with interest. Daniel looks fascinated too, although he was there when it happened.

'Didn't know then,' answers Rorschach. 'Couldn't see. Only feel, felt flesh pressing around me. Stink of blood like a butcher's shop, like being trapped in a barrel of meat. Couldn't see, could barely move arms and legs. Pushed and pushed, tore at flesh around me trying to get out. Managed to scramble out backwards in the end, finding way into the light. And then...'

Daniel stands abruptly. 'I'll go and make us some coffee,' he says. Rorschach feels a moments heavy puzzlement and then he grabs Daniel's hand, winding fingers together clumsily. 'Don't be angry,' he pleads. 'Won't tell this part, will stop there. Don't have to go.'

'I was only going to make some coffee,' says Daniel, looking helplessly at Laurel.

'No, didn't like me telling Laurel next part. Know that now. Will not tell. Don't go!' He feels very strange, it's hard to hold onto more than one thought at a time. Daniel was going to leave because of him doing something, therefore it's important to keep Daniel here. That will mean Daniel isn't angry with him.

'Really, I'm not angry,' says Daniel. 'I'll be right back with the coffee.'

Rorschach tries to follow him as he pulls away, but two legs aren't enough to hold him. Four legs works better, but he seems to be going in circles a lot and then he's tipping over onto his side and he can't seem to find his feet again. The whole room is tipping and all he can do is scrabble round in circles like a wasp drunk on fallen apples, so maybe Daniel was right about him being drunk and maybe Laurel was right about him being a bug as well but the room keeps tipping sideways and he doesn't like this at all and he needs to reach Daniel but he can't remember why and if only things would just stop spinning...

Daniel scoops him up and he presses his face into Daniel's chest in relief. 'Keeps...keeps tipping. And I can't...can't walk!'

'It's okay,' says Daniel. 'Just calm down. Take deep breathes, okay. It will stop.'

Rorschach does as he's told, relieved when the world settles down a bit. 'Don't like being drunk,' he says confidentially into Daniel's ear.

'Come on, let's go and sit down for a bit,' says Daniel, moving them over to the sofa.

In the end it's Laurel that makes the coffee, she arranges three mugs of it on the coffee table and sits down next to them. She's brought some water as well, which Daniel coaxes Rorschach into drinking. Once it's gone Rorschach wriggles out of Daniel's arms and flops himself across both their laps, finding himself rather comfortable on a bed of legs. He looks up at Laurel above him and gives her a mandible filled smile.

'I like you,' he says. 'Even when you dress like a whore and Daniel thinks you're pretty.'

'Oh, god,' mutters Daniel.

'I like you too, even when you're a complete hypocrite,' says Laurel.

She's started absently petting his head, and Rorschach hrms happily and snuggles into both her and Daniel. 'This is nice,' he says, warm and sleepy. 'Always wanted to spend Christmas with a family.'


	17. Hangover

Rorschach wakes when the first light of dawn comes through the curtains and hits his eyes with the force of a power drill. With a whimper he crawls under the covers, burying himself in soft darkness. His back aches all the way to his tail tip and his stomach is growling miserably at him. Worse he's feeling the shameful, pitiful urge to find Daniel, crawl into his lap and stay there until he feels less ill. Pathetic, he snarls at himself and curls up, fighting tears with the fervour usually reserved for fighting enemies. He drifts into a light uncomfortable doze, filled with lurid half images too confused to quite manage to be nightmares, and wakes when the sound of Daniel opening the door hammers his ears feeling, if possible, even worse.

'How are you feeling?' Daniel asks and Rorschach answers without emerging from the covers.

'Sick. Your fault. Go away.' He doesn't really want Daniel to go away but neither is he going to ask for coddling over something as trivial and embarrassing as a hangover.

'How is it my fault?' asks Daniel, and Rorschach's rather hurt that he sounds more amused than sympathetic.

'Told me I wouldn't get drunk. Go away.'

The door closes and Daniel's footsteps fade off downstairs, hushed by the carpet. Rorschach curls up tighter and suppresses a sniffle. The door opens again a few minutes later and Daniel says, 'I've brought you some orange juice, if you want it.'

Rorschach pokes his head out tentatively from under the cover, wishing he could blink, and reaches out for the carton. When Daniel hands it over he retreats back into the darkness with it and unscrews the lid. After the first sip his dehydrated body demands more and he tips the carton down his throat as quickly as possible, stomach roiling in protest but aches subsiding a little as his body absorbs it. He pushes the empty carton back out of the bed, hears it make a quiet clonk as it hits the floor. A hastily suppressed chuckle from Daniel follows.

'Finding this funny, Daniel?'

'No.' It's not an answer either of them can find convincing. 'Maybe a little. But it's not...I know being hungover sucks. I'm not...' He sighs and the bed springs creak as he sits down. 'Come here.'

'Do not require coddling.'

But when Daniel reaches under the covers for him he lets himself be pulled out into Daniel's lap and hides sensitive eyes against his chest. Being petted and cuddled shouldn't make him feel any better, and he's still annoyed with Daniel as well, but his body relaxes automatically soaking up affection as thirstily as it had the orange juice. Gentle hands rub at his spine between his wings and if they don't stop his head hurting at least they ease the tearful feeling in his chest. Although it's not long before he has another problem.

'Daniel, need...ehnk. Bathroom.'

'Okay. Can you make it there by yourself?'

'Hungover, not crippled,' Rorschach says witheringly. Walking does make him feel off balance, and flying is abandoned as an idea when spreading his wings makes them feel like they're being snipped to pieces with dressmaking shears, but he will not suffer the humiliation of being carried to the bathroom and makes it there and back by himself. This time he climbs into Daniel's lap willingly and finds his headache has subsided to levels where he can now think. Unfortunately what he's thinking about is last night, when he sprawled all over Laurel's lap and said he liked her. And acted like an insecure child with Daniel, afraid to let him leave the room and make coffee.

'Would like to apologise for behaviour last night,' he says into Daniel's pyjama top.

'I thought that was my fault?' says Daniel.

'Not apologising for getting drunk, was unintentional. Behaviour while drunk...should have better self control even if not entirely sober. Embarrassed you.'

'It's fine.' A kiss is pressed to the top of Rorschach's head for emphasis. 'You didn't do anything that bad. And it was interesting to hear your side of things.' A pause. 'What you said to Laurel though...do you worry about her and me?'

Daniel sounds both tentative and suddenly serious and Rorschach isn't sure how to reply. Especially with thinking still requiring some effort. He knows they are attracted to one another, but saying that would sound like an accusation when he doesn't suspect Daniel of doing anything wrong. 'Know you wouldn't cheat on me. Are better than that.' Better than him.

'I don't want to cheat on you. I love you, I wouldn't throw this away for anything.' Daniel's voice is tender and fierce, Rorschach sighs against him and doesn't answer. He believes Daniel loves him, but he doesn't believe in unconditional love. Love without obvious strings attached just means not knowing what you might do to lose it, and if he loses Daniel it will be to Laurel. Knowing that makes her presence sting even as he has come to like her, even as she's the only one he will trust with Daniel's safety. He uncurls and takes Daniel's face in his hands, meets his eyes and answers him with a mixture of evasion and sincerity.

'Believe you. Love you too.'

It's enough of an assurance for Daniel to let him push the subject aside, and Rorschach is careful not to provide an opportunity for him to bring it up again. They spend most of the day curled up together, both reading separate books, and by evening Rorschach has recovered from his hangover but not the embarrassment of having been drunk. Laurel doesn't help by grinning at him as soon as she steps onto Archie and saying, 'So, do you still like me now you're sober?'

He growls, 'No,' and goes to sit in his co-pilots chair, staring out the window to avoid looking at her.

'He looks just like an affronted cat,' says Laurel in a not very quiet whisper. Rorschach ignores her, he had been intending to apologise to her but has very definitely changed his mind.

Daniel and Laurel patrol, leaving him in Archie with the familiar mix of anxiety and jealousy as he's forced to wait in safety while they keep the streets clean. He fishes his journal out of the glove compartment and stares at it, decides there are things that don't need recording and puts it away again. It's snowing again, only lightly but it's a firm reminder of his own uselessness. He feels agitated and unsettled, something gnawing on his consciousness. Something happened yesterday and he missed it, some clue he's seen without noticing. The feeling of having a case and knowing he's made a wrong assumption, that it will turn out to be something entirely different if he can put his finger on it. He shakes his head, there isn't a clue he's missed. It's just the lingering remains of his hangover and too little sleep unsettling him.

He dozes later, too tired to help it and there's no point in pretending he might be needed. Daniel and Laurel talk at the front while he naps on one of the beds. He's woken by a soft, conspiratorial note in Laurel's voice, the first time she's sounded like she cares that he might hear.

'I've been meaning to ask,' she says. 'What did he think you didn't want me to know?'

'Oh, man,' says Daniel, clearly embarrassed. 'I didn't know it was him. He'd fallen over and started jerking around on the floor and then this...thing crawled out of him. I thought it had eaten him from inside or something.'

'So...' prompts Laurel.

'I went for him with a kitchen knife.' Daniel says it quickly, getting it out. Rorschach shivers, remembering Daniel looming over him pale with anger. Being crushed against the stairs with a knife at his throat and knowing that he was going to die at the hands of the only person who had ever cared about him. The sick despair of that moment when he had given up on any hope of life, resigned himself to dying as a monster with no one even knowing it had been him.

'Oh, shit,' says Laurel. 'Didn't he say something?'

'He couldn't talk at first, he had to relearn how,' says Daniel. 'He just chittered at me and tried to scare me off. And I was half mad with grief, I thought he'd killed...himself. I nearly slit his throat before I realised.' Daniel's voice is trembling now and then there's silence and the rustle of fabric. Rorschach realises Laurel is hugging him. He should go and comfort Daniel himself, but Daniel would never tell this story in front of him any more than he would in front of Daniel. And he wants to know.

'I figured out it was him when he started crying,' says Daniel softly and Rorschach winces. He could have done without Laurel knowing that part. 'I stopped then, of course, and I was just so relieved.' A sniff. 'He had a hard enough time, changing into something not human, anyway. Accepting it. It really can't have helped that my first reaction was to flip out and go for him like that.'

Guilt, thinks Rorschach. Guilt, responsibility, being needed. It's these things that bind Daniel to him more securely than love. He wants to get up and go to Daniel, tell him it's okay, but he doesn't know how to say it, how to make it believable when the memory still haunts them both. At the same time he wants Daniel to feel guilty, if guilt binds them together. Unworthy but true. So he stays where he is and lets Laurel comfort Daniel, knowing she deserves him more than Rorschach does. It's as cold inside him as the icy ground outside, as his cold-blooded body without the warmth Daniel provides.


	18. Talking

'Have you ever thought about stinging me?' It's blurted out in a rush while Rorschach's mainly focused on the newspaper.

Daniel's been fidgetting all day and it will occur to Rorschach later that he picked his time carefully. Two days to the full moon, close enough for Rorschach to have a sex drive but not close enough for him to be coerced by his hormones. Right now he's barely paying attention so he grunts, 'Only when very annoying,' without looking up.

Daniel laughs nervously and starts cleaning his glasses. 'Not like that. I meant, you know. Sexually.'

That gets Rorschach's attention the same way being punched in the gut would. He knows he gets a bit aggressive at times, running sting and mandibles against Daniel's skin just to prove that being small doesn't make him helpless. But Daniel thinks Rorschach would hurt him?

'Never.' He chokes the word out. 'Would never hurt you.'

'Oh, hey, I didn't mean…' Daniel trails off and puts his glasses back on. He's bright pink. 'I meant if I wanted you to.'

Rorschach looks down at his hands and realises the black and white has coalesced into squiggles that could almost be words from a distance. Trying to camouflage against newsprint. His body is the colour of the chair and maybe it doesn't blush but it takes wishing he could disappear a bit literally. He doesn't want to talk about things like this.

'No,' he says.

'Why not?' Daniel is still blushing, clearly as uncomfortable as Rorschach is, so why does he still want to discuss this? 'You've come pretty close a few times and you clearly like being in control.'

'Just no. Not going to talk about indecent situations,' says Rorschach. He pretends to look at the newspaper and Daniel chuckles nervously again.

'If we can have sex we ought to be able to talk about it,' he says.

Rorschach considers ignoring him but Daniel can be surprisingly stubborn. He doesn't need to live with someone trying to have this conversation at every opportunity. Better to just have it now.

'Daniel. Am not going paralyse and rape you. Clear?' Rorschach's tail is starting to curl upwards, pressing against the back of the chair, for some reason he feels like he's fighting. Daniel comes closer anyway, sitting down across from him.

'That's…pretty clear. But it really wouldn't be rape if I asked you to do it.' Daniel's voice is calm, deliberately calm, and Rorschach wants to sting him just to shut him up rather than for any sexual reason. He shakes his head rapidly.

'Wouldn't be able to tell me to stop. Might do something you didn't like.'

'I've liked everything you've done so far, so if you stick to that-'

'Daniel. No.' Rorschach doesn't wait to hear his next argument, he flings himself out of the chair like a swimmer pushing off from the side of a pool. It's not as if there's anywhere he can hide, but Daniel won't follow him into his room without permission. The both know Rorschach couldn't handle not having a place to get away from people.

Rorschach drops onto the dressing table and glares at his reflection. Despite his mood what he sees isn't the same creature he saw a couple of months ago. What he sees now is a light, compact body, stiff when moving on the ground but good for climbing. Thick skin, hard to bruise and quick to heal. Long fingers and toes for clinging to walls. Wide eyes with a greater field of vision than a human's and excellent night vision too. Huge wings, fragile but strong. And, of course, a weapon. Non-lethal, always to hand and never in need of reloading.

Rorschach pulls his sting around and weighs it in his palm. It's about big enough to fill his hand and roughly the shape of a comma, covered with a thin layer of skin for camouflage except for the tip which is black. If he presses it hard against something clear venom will start to bead on the tip. And Daniel wants it driven through his skin. Rorschach shakes his head, it's a weapon, and playing is one thing but he's never intended to use it on his friend.

The knock at the door which interrupts his brooding sounds timid which is the only reason Rorschach growls 'Come in,' instead of 'Go away.'

Daniel steps inside and pushes the door shut behind him, leaning back against it afterwards. 'I'm sorry,' he says and carries on talking quickly before Rorschach can interrupt. 'I didn't mean to upset you. But you've nearly stung me before and it always drives me wild so I wanted to see what it was like if you actually did. Being completely helpless like that. Maybe it's an incubus fantasy or something, but I really didn't mean to upset you. So. Sorry.'

'Hurm.' Rorschach doesn't think he looks much like an incubus, but it probably depends which legends you read. He sighs. 'Determined to make me talk about this, Daniel?'

'I'll go away if you like,' says Daniel. 'But it does seem odd the, uh, stuff we do without talking about it. And, honestly, if I've given consent beforehand then it's okay. I can tell you exactly which things I'm okay with you doing beforehand as well if you want.'

Whether Daniel admits it or not he clearly is going to make Rorschach talk about this. Being stung, however incomprehensible the desire, must be something a wants quite a lot.

'I won't know,' says Rorschach. He curls his arms and then his tail around his legs, holding himself together in a tight ball. 'I won't know if you like it, hate it, want to stop. Don't want to be in that position.'

Daniel nods. 'Okay. I get why you don't want to do it now. I won't mention it again.'

Rorschach lets out his breath in a half sigh half growl and uncurls sharply. 'Good.' That was easier than expected.

'But.' And Rorschach freezes at the sound of the word. 'I do think we should talk about things more. It feels like we have a relationship at the full moon and the rest of the time we pretend it doesn't really happen.'

Rorschach hesistates but Daniel has already forced him into honesty today. And has seen him in the middle of a full scale breakdown often enough that there's little point in hiding from him, although Rorschach winces internally at the memory.

'If I think about it too much will be too scared to do it. Things fall apart if examined too closely. Best to leave them.'

'…Huh. You know there's nothing to be scared of, right?'

Rorschach shakes his head. Having someone means having someone to lose. There's plenty to be scared of. 'Leave it, Daniel. Please.'

Daniel scoops Rorschach into his arms suddenly, startling a hiss out of him, and kisses his forehead. 'Okay. I'll leave it for now,' he says. Rorschach buries his face in Daniel's neck, enjoying the warmth he's being held against. Maybe they'll have to talk later but for now he can just enjoy things the way they are. Even if he feels change coming with the melting snow of a world on it's way to spring.


	19. Request

It's not spring yet but it's on its way. The mornings are icy but the afternoons are slushy and apparently its the mating season for something or other because Dan's gone birdwatching to see their courtship displays. Damn birds are getting more sex than Laurie is. It's not as if Jon wouldn't if she asked, but the fact he hasn't yet noticed she's stopped asking makes it pretty clear how interested he is. As she understands it Dan and Rorschach have a lot of sex three days a month and some sex through another six, which means roughly two thirds of the time Dan gets no sex at all. And that's still more sex than she's getting. Pretty hot sex too from what she's seen and she briefly wonders what they'd say if she asked whether she can watch again. The phone ringing pulls her out of her thoughts but not that far because the person on the other end is Dan.

'Hi, Laurie,' he says. 'Listen. I'm not going to make it back tonight, my car's broken down and it's too far for a taxi.'

He sounds almost panicked, which is odd. Being a day late isn't going to kill anyone. 'Tough luck,' says Laurie sympathetically. 'But you'll get back tomorrow, right? Do you want me to tell Rorschach?'

'It's full moon,' says Daniel. 'I thought I'd be back in time. I-I'm pretty worried about him.'

'What, he's not capable of masturbating?' Laurie thinks she might actually be able to hear Dan blushing.

'No. I mean, he probably can. But there've been times where…it's clearly pretty uncomfortable for him not to have someone at times like this. Um. I was wondering if you'd…'

Laurie's halfway between thanking God and bursting into embarrassed laughter. 'You're asking me to go and have sex with your boyfriend? Dan, he'd kill both of us.'

'He likes us too much for that. I hope. And if it's as bad as I'm worried about, he might be glad to have someone he trusts on hand.'

Laurie wonders just how bad it would have to be for Rorschach to even contemplate this. But Dan knows him better than she does, so maybe it is actually painful for his mating drive not to have an outlet. Which means she really ought to do what she really wants to do and just get over there. He can say 'no' if he doesn't like it, right?

'Okay, I'll ask him. Don't blame me if he stings you when you get home.'

'Stings…? Oh, oh yeah. No, I don't think he'll be that angry. Thanks, Laurie. You're a real friend.'

'Let's hope Rorschach sees it like that.'

Laurie's still hoping when she types in the number Dan gave her and opens the door between the owl's nest and Dan's kitchen. It's after dark already and she can't see anything until her hand finds the lightswitch. Rorschach is hovering in the middle of the room watching her, he must have heard the door opening. It's rare that she gets to see him like this, he loses heat through his wings so he's stayed on the ground through the winter. She's struck by how beautiful his wings are, somewhere between silk and the surface of a soap bubble, catching and refracting the light above him.

'Was expecting Daniel.' It's typical of Rorschach not to even bother with 'hello' but Laurie still feels a moment's irritation over it.

'His car broke down. He'll be back tomorrow.'

'Hrm.' She's watching Rorschach's face carefully, but there's no change in his expression. No sign that this news has consigned him to a night of pain and frustration. 'Sent you to tell me.'

'Actually he sent me to have sex with you.'

That gets a reaction. Rorschach's wings flutter sharply, sending him bobbing like a cork, before he lands on the kitchen table and stands staring at her. Like this they're nearly at eye level with one another. He drops abruptly into a crouch, head ducking in what might be pain or embarrassment.

'Will be fine. Do not require…charity.'

There's clearly something wrong, though, and Laurie wonders if this was what Dan was worried about. 'You look like you need something,' she says.

Rorschach shakes his head and pushes his hand between his legs. She sees the black tips of pincers for a moment before he shoves them back inside him making her wince.

'Doesn't that hurt?'

'Can handle it.' His voice is strained although it doesn't show it like a human voice. Instead it loses its register, whining and wavering through several.

'Don't. I'm meant to be making this easier for you.'

'Isn't working.' He's curled up again, making it impossible for the pincers to come out. Laurie wonders if it would be better if she left, at least then he could stop fighting it and masturbate.

'I want this, you know,' she says, surprising both of them. 'I wouldn't be here if Dan hadn't asked, but only because I wouldn't try to come between you two.'

'Liar. Dan's the one you want.' He's resting his head on his knees, hiding his eyes now. Laurie gives in to temptation and strokes the edge of a wing. It's soft, despite its appearance it feels almost like leather. Like kid, maybe, but even softer than that.

'I want both of you, especially together,' says Laurie. She's been hiding it, but right now admitting it can only help the situation. Apparently she hasn't been hiding it that well, anyway, since Rorschach knew she wanted Dan and Dan guessed she'd say yes to this request. 'God, your wings are beautiful.'

Rorschach suddenly kneels, pincers slipping out with the motion, and looks her in the eye. The pincers are intimidating, thick and dark, but she's seen him use them on Dan and he only held his leg with them. Rorschach puts a hand on her breast and there's something about the gesture that's both daring and experimental. It would make her want to laugh if she wasn't feeling much the same way.

'Want you too,' he says. 'Probably just the full moon.'

'Gee, thanks.' His lips twitch at that, but he doesn't say anything. Just leans forward and presses his head against her chest. His hands start sliding up under her sweater and Laurie takes that as permission to take a double handful of a wing. They fascinate her, so flimsy yet they can carry him with ease.

'Does this feel okay?' she asks, crumpling it slightly between her fingers.

'Fine. Just don't pinch. Bruises easily.'

'Okay.' She bends down and flicks her tongue over the wing where she's holding it, surprised when he gasps and shudders against her. 'How did that feel?'

'Hm. Sensations from wings normally less than body. But hot and cold. Intensify.'

'Huh, well the blood is really near the surface.' The sight of the freezer gives Laurie a sudden inspiration and she pulls away from Rorschach. He lets her, watches while she rummages and only looks quizzical when she returns with a saucer of icecubes and a truimphant grin. 'C'mon,' she says. 'Let's go upstairs and find a bed.'

Rorschach lets Laurie push him down onto the bed, wings spreading out from under him to drape gracefully over the edges. She's surprised that he lets her take the lead when he's been so aggressive with Dan, but he seems tentative now. Perhaps he really does think she's doing him a favour.

She puts the ice down on the nightstand for later and runs both hands down his ribs. There are more of them than a human would have, and they stick out forming ridges in the skin. For all that he looks healthy and his skin is sleek under her probing hands. Laurie moves down, sliding a hand between his legs, finding a soft dome behind the twitching pincers.

'What is this?' she asks. 'A giant clit?'

He growls. 'Is not.'

'Well, that's what is looks like.' Laurie resists the urge to poke it. Whatever it is she's willing to bet it's sensitve. Instead she pets it and Rorschach twists frantically, trying to bend his pincers to where they can grab her. She pulls back quickly and he whines in frustration. 'Do you really need to grab something with those?'

He nods instead of speaking, a softly pulsing whine coming from his throat. Laurie strips off quickly, almost gracelessly, and moves to kneel over him. It feels strange to slip her leg between his, pressing her thigh into his pincers. They close with bruising force and she jumps, lifting them both from the bed. 'Ow! Can't you be a little gentler?'

He whines again, apologetic, and Laurie wonders if he actually can't talk while overcome by lust. The pincers spasm against her as he tries frantically for a gentler grip. When he manages she whispers a 'thank you' and kisses between his eyes, her tenderness seems to help and he relaxes suddenly, stretching himself languidly against he rumpled bedclothes. Laurie leans her weight on her left hand and reaches over him for the ice.

Her fingers burn and numb as she grabs a slippery half melted cube but this is going to be worth it. She runs the cube over one wing, eliciting a gasp, and then licks over it's trail. A wild ululating cry next to her ear startles her into jerking her head up and then she grins. Nice to know she's doing something right. His other wing lifts and falls over them, closing them into a rainbow tinted world. It's soft on her back sliding against her and leaving skin tingling and senstised.

She swirls the icecube over his wing again, drawing a cursive 'L' with a smile. When he shifts onto his side and curls around she worries that she's done something wrong, but fingers gently probing between her legs tell her otherwise. She shifts, moving her legs apart to give him access, even as she bends to sign his wing with her tongue.

His fingers prod at her, gentle but completely clueless. She grabs his hand with her own to guide him, murmuring instructions as she helps him find her clit. Warmth runs through her pleasantly at his efforts, along with a mounting tension. She's not the only one feeling it, colour is making tiny rifts between the black and white swirling over Rorschach's skin. The room around them is lost in the rainbow refractions of his wing.

Laurie drops the icecube and bends to kiss his neck, lap at the base of his throat. His pincers tighten but loosen again quickly and he's frowing in concentration. Huge eyes full of light look only at her. He kneels up and presses his head between her breasts, Laurie wraps her arms around him and they almost engulf him. He's so small, so thin, vibrating with tension against her stomach as his fingers probe earnestly inside her. They hit something that sends a tidal wave of pleasure up her spine, but he jumps and pulls away when she cries out.

'No, that was _my_ mating call. Keep going,' she says. He laughs, a breathless trembling note that's nothing like a human laugh at all but still entirely recognisable for what it is. His free arm wraps around Laurie's neck and mandibles scrape her collar bone, half kissing half biting. His pincers have tightened again and she can feel liquid pooling against her leg below them. This time she doesn't care.

They cry out together, wild and feral, one human and one not. There's no black or white left, he's pulsing all the colours in the world. Rorschach comes first, remembers to keep his fingers moving even as his pincers release her and slide back inside him. Laurie's arms tighten around him as she comes, trying to pull him closer, make him hers. They flop back onto the bed, arms still around one another, neither wanting to let go.


	20. Missing

Laurie wakes up and the bed beside her is empty. Okay, Rorschach woke up first, that's not surprising. Laurie's not exactly an early riser and with those eyes Rorschach's got to be at least half nocturnal. He's probably in the kitchen getting breakfast, he eats nearly all the damn time anyway. Dan says he doesn't have a mechanism for storing energy.

Rorschach's not in the kitchen, or in his own bedroom, or in the bathroom, the living room or even the basement or the attic. The house is starting to feel eerily empty. Laurie glances at the window and grimaces at the fernleaf pattern of frost, the weather's been getting warmer but not by that much. That idiot had better not be outside.

'Rorschach,' she calls from the middle of the landing, there's no answer and Laurie remembers the tiny curled body she'd found on the night when she first saw him like this. Remembers how cold it was to the touch. 'Rorschach!'

Still no answer and Laurie is suddenly reminded of the time she was twelve and agreed to look after a hamster while a friend went on holiday. It had escaped and Sally had eventually found it behind the washing machine, but not before Laurie was in tears over losing something somebody else loved and had entrusted to her.

'Rorschach, get out here you asshole! Don't fucking scare me like this!'

The bathroom door creaks open and Rorschach peers around it before edging out onto the landing. Laurie almost chokes on relief and glares at him. 'What the hell were you doing?'

'Attempting to avoid awkwardness,' he says quietly.

'You really thought I was just going to leave when I couldn't find you?' says Laurie. Her voice is remarkably calm but if he says one more stupid thing she's going to snap.

'Why not? Got what you came for.'

That does it and Laurie makes a grab for his bony shoulders ready to attempt to shake some sense into him. Rorschach slips through her hands with a sound almost comically like 'meep' and dives back into the bathroom kicking the door shut behind him. The lock clicks just as Laurie grabs the handle.

'Get out here you coward!' Laurie yells at the locked door, pounding angrily on it with both hands. 'You fucking stupid _ignorant_…' She gives the door a kick for good measure and continues the litany of insults until she runs out of breath. Leaning against the door she feels hollow and shaken, coming down from the spike of adrenaline that comes with anger. She slides down the door to sit against it and lights her pipe. 'Rorschach?' she asks quietly.

No answer and he's really good at ignoring her today. Probably sulking after she just screamed her head off at him. Or scared, a little voice in the back of her mind suggests. It makes no sense, this is Rorschach there's no way he's going to be scared by Laurie's temper. But Dan is always so careful of him and while it could just be Dan being careful of everyone maybe…

'Sorry I yelled at you,' she says. 'You are such an idiot, though. What is it going to take to get it into your head that people worry about you? We don't have a magic bugdar that tells us whether you're fine or not.' Rorschach's still ignoring her and Laurie wants to cry. Him and Dan always manage to be so close and so far away, they'll pull her in but still exclude her. If Dan was here he'd probably know what to do and Laurie's a second best replacement that Rorschach doesn't even want to talk to the next morning.

'It's not just about sex,' she says. 'I love you guys, I love how much you love each other. And that's just dumb because it means loving people who don't need me around at all.' She pulls herself to her feet. 'The weather's warming up, you'll be able to patrol without me soon. And I bet Dan won't let this happen again either. So you won't have to deal with my intrusion for much longer.'

There's the sound of something shifting on the other side of the door, but Rorschach's still not going to talk to her. Laurie feels like a child, throwing a temper tantrum and then wanting comfort. She probably doesn't deserve it anyway.

'Dan will be back soon,' she says. 'Goodbye.'

All the way through the tunnel she's expecting him to catch up with her. He doesn't.


	21. Memories

Dan curses the red light but takes advantage of the stop to push his glasses up and rub his eyes. He hadn't slept well the night before, too worried about what he might find when he gets home. Rorschach upset or angry, or having done something dreadful and upset Laurie. A baser part of Dan's brain even worried that he'd find everything fine, told him how stupid it was to push the two people he was attracted to together. And a more primitive part altogether had treated him to vivid images of Laurie and Rorschach that were less worrying but no more conducive to sleep. The result is that he's tired and anxious and only just resisting the urge to run red lights and speed. It's okay, he'll be home soon, and whatever he finds at least it will reduce the things he has to worry about to the one that actually happened.

Pushing open the door he finds his house quiet, Laurie doesn't seem to be here. There are no breakfast things on the table. 'Rorschach?' he calls and hears a door squeak open upstairs. Dan waits by the door, wondering whether he should go up there or wait for Rorschach to come down. Before he's made up his mind Rorschach zips through the hall in a flurry of wings and winds up clamped firmly to Dan's chest, head tucked against Dan's neck.

'Oh, dear,' says Dan, stroking his head. 'Was last night that bad?'

'Last night was fine. Morning wasn't.' That cryptic comment seems to be all Dan's going to get. Rorschach's still black and white, which is a good sign, and he's seeking comfort from Dan instead of hiding from him, which is a better one. So Dan sits them both down on the sofa and concentrates on cuddling Rorschach into a better mood.

It's a technique he's found surprisingly effective considering Rorschach's a hardened vigilante. But Rorschach's a lot more likely to be rational about things if he feels safe and loved, no matter how much ruthless efficiency he's capable of while feeling paranoid and unwanted. So it's not until he actually relaxes against Dan that Dan asks what happened to upset him.

'Laurel attacked me.'

Okay, not good, and also not the whole story by a long way. 'Why?' That gets Dan a little growl and a flash of red. He sighs. 'I'm not taking sides here, but I doubt she attacked you out of the blue. Give me the whole story.'

'Rmph.' Rorschach sounds like a cat in a huff and Dan quickly suppresses a smile. 'Tried to avoid awkwardness. Stayed in airing cupboard.'

'Wait, this was this morning, right? You hid in the airing cupboard?'

'Conversation seemed unnecessary.' Rorschach turns around on Dan's lap so that he has his back to him, sitting stiffly. Embarrassed.

'And Laurie found you?'

A quick headshake. 'Came out. She was scared, calling me. Then she attacked me, tried to grab me. Was pounding on the door, shouting.'

Dan feels the tremor through his legs. Oddly the shouting seems to be what scared Rorschach the most. He shifts and pulls Rorschach back against him. 'I've been angry with you for scaring me before,' he says quietly.

'Not like that. You don't shout. Not for long. And you don't call me names or bang things.'

Dan's petting Rorschach's back almost automatically. Trying to figure out why Rorschach's so scared now when he's stood up to the worst scum New York can throw at him. _Think my mother always knew I was a monster._ The words float up from memory, from the bad times in the first few weeks after Rorschach changed. A moment of vulnerability, a truth Dan hadn't dared to push at. Another memory, a happy one, Christmas and learning Rorschach was raised in a home.

'Bad memories?' Dan asks cautiously and feels Rorschach stiffen. Wonders if Rorschach even remembers what he'd said while in the depths of despair.

When Dan stays silent afterwards Rorschach gradually relaxes until finally the words seem to drain out of him with the last of the tension, a whisper barely more than a breath, 'My mother.' And then a pause and, more as if talking to himself than Dan, 'She smoked afterwards too.'

Dan wants to say that Laurie couldn't have known, that she's not like that, but it feels like the wrong thing to say. Too close to blaming Rorschach for being scared. So he just pulls Rorschach close and kisses his head and leaves the silence to fall around them like the drape of Rorschach's wings.

It feels like hours before Rorschach speaks again but is probably only ten minutes. 'Know Laurel wouldn't have hit me. But she's so big now.'

'Yeah,' says Dan. Remembers Rorschach being edgy around him at first as well. Laurie's a woman, that's bound to make it worse, and she does yell when she's angry. Rorschach looks up into his eyes and Dan can see concern in those amber pools.

'Said she wasn't coming back,' says Rorschach.

'Why? Because she knew she'd scared you, or something else?'

Rorschach flits off Dan's lap and starts pacing on all fours, wings trailing him like a bridal train. After a few lengths of the living room he stops and looks at Dan. 'Said she loved us.' Dan stares with his mouth open, he'd known Laurie was attracted to both of them. But love? What about her and Jon? Rorschach shrugs. 'Can't make sense of it either. Knew she was in love with you.'

Dan slides onto the floor so that he can pull Rorschach back onto his lap. 'Why shouldn't she be in love with you?' he demands. 'I am.'

'Hurm. You're just kinky and weird.'

Dan bursts out laughing. 'Laurie probably is too,' he manages. 'What with the glowing blue guy.'

Oh, Hell, Laurie just cheated on Jon, didn't she? And now Dan feels guilty for asking her to. Which isn't stopping the rush of elation at knowing Laurie loves him and, more than that, loves Rorschach as well. For a moment the primitive bit of his mind that gave him so much trouble last night is providing him with high definition threesomes before he remembers that Rorschach probably wouldn't like having Laurie around and Laurie herself said she wasn't coming back.

'Going to look for her?' asks Rorschach, wriggling out of his arms.

Dan sighs. 'Do you want us to?'

'Us?' Rorschach's looking at him with an intensity that makes Dan sigh again.

'I wouldn't swap you for Laurie for a million dollars,' he says seriously. 'Having both of you would be a dream come true, but…not if you don't like it.' And maybe that's why Laurie left, he thinks. Who would want to be part of a relationship where they always come second to someone else?

Rorschach swishes his tail a few times and says, 'Need time to think about it.'

'Okay,' says Dan. And it's unfair on Laurie, but he'll phone her later anyway if only to tell her Rorschach is all right. Sometimes you really can't be fair to everybody no matter how much you want to be. 'Think as much as you like.'


	22. Fake

'Jon,' says Laurie and Jon looks at her, absently curious, like he doesn't know what she's about to say. It makes her doubt she will say it, wonder if she'll chicken out and the words will change before they pass her lips. But if he knows now he knew yesterday and the first moment they touched. Will it matter to him, the end of their relationship, when yesterday and tomorrow are as real to him as now? 'I'm leaving you.'

The words sound clean in the air, but sharp, she wonders if she should have done this differently. But tact is meaningless to Jon, who sees nothing but reality, and perhaps that's why they've lasted as long as they have.

'Why?' Jon asks, tilts his head. 'Laurie, if I've done something to upset you then I'm sure we can work it out.'

The words are wrong, thinks Laurie. He either knows they will or knows they can't. It's such a normal thing to say, as normal as the anxiety in his gaze. As feigned. She thinks of Rorschach scuttling on all fours, his honesty about what the moonlight does to him. Rorschach has the courage to admit he's no longer human.

'You already know that we won't,' she says firmly. Her heart's pounding, she's scared, but not of Jon. Jon who has killed so many, but only on orders, who would never think to turn his powers against her. She's scared to leave him, scared to be alone, but she can't take this anymore.

'Are you leaving me for Dan and Rorschach?' he asks.

'You tell me,' says Laurie, and when he doesn't she looks at the antiseptic floor. 'No, I'm not. They don't want me. I'm just leaving.'

'Then why?'

'Because.' Because she wants someone to look at her the way they look at each other. Because she's sick of being the thing her mother made her. Feeling like a fake vigilante, a fake everything, not even sure if her relationship is real. 'Because I don't think you'll really care if I'm gone, anyway.'

'That's not true, Laurie,' he says, hand on her shoulder tingling through her top. 'You are the only thing in this world I am bound to.'

That should mean something, that should mean a lot, but it doesn't. He cares about her more than anything else in the world, but she knows exactly how much that means. He cares as much for the world as most people would for a coffee cup or a piece of furniture. It's nothing.

'I'm sorry, Jon. I'm still going.'

And she does.


	23. Ambivalence

Dan comes home to find newsprint fragments like confetti scattered over the living room. One piece says 'W FR' and Dan lets it slip between his fingers, drift back down to the carpet, then goes to put the shopping away before finding the culprit. Rorschach answers his knock with a grunt, but it's an affirmative grunt and Dan pushes the door open. Rorschach is sitting on the bed with his journal open, mandibles scoring jagged cuts around the end of his biro.

'Not that I don't find that an appropriate reaction to the New Frontiersman,' says Dan. 'But did you have to scatter it all over my living room?'

'Hnf,' says Rorschach and goes back to gnawing his pen.

Dan can't remember the headline on the New Frontiersman. Maybe it was SILK SPECTRE DUMPS DR MANHATTAN or AMERICA'S HERO ABANDONED. Laurie's been in all the headlines this week, people discussing her, discussing Jon, and underneath it all a seething anger. She was being paid to keep their superweapon happy, wasn't she? What gave her the right to walk away?

'She seems to be handling it okay,' says Dan. Laurie's quoted as saying [expletive deleted] a lot, but at least her interviews make her sound annoyed rather than shattered. She grew up in the limelight, maybe she's used to it.

'Called her a whore,' mutters Rorschach.

Dan blinks. 'So do you.'

'Don't mean it.' Rorschach's tail twitches back and forth. 'Read her interviews. Doesn't mention us.'

'Did you want her to?'

'No.' Rorschach's tail is swishing like a metronome now. 'Miss her.'

'Yeah. Me too.' Dan stops hovering in the doorway and walks across to join Rorschach on the bed. 'The newspapers have made her address pretty public if you want me to find her.'

'No. Can't go back. All or nothing now.'

'What I don't get,' says Dan, shifting to lean back against the headboard. 'Is what part of that you don't want. The sex?' Rorschach shakes his head, puts down his journal and crawls to perch on Dan's legs. 'Spending time together? Because we've been doing that all winter.'

Long fingers press against his lips and Dan shuts up, obedient against his better judgement. They are going to talk about this, he tells himself, he just has to find a way to broach the subject that will actually get answers out of Rorschach.

Patrol that evening is Dan alone as usual, although Rorschach listens hopefully to the weather forecast. Not long now before he can hit the streets again, Dan thinks with a smile. Not being cooped up in the house or the airship will probably improve his mood a lot, and Dan wonders whether to leave discussing Laurie until then. As if conjured by the thought he sees a black and yellow figure at the end of an alley. It's not until he gets closer that he sees the blood.

'Laurie! Are you okay?' It's her right arm, a long cut runs from elbow to wrist and she's got her hand around the top of it to try and stem the flow of blood. Dan's reaching for his first aid kit before she answers.

'Got knifed,' she says. 'Shit. I can't do anything right.' She hisses as Dan runs an alcohol swab up her arm before starting to wind the bandage on. It's a long cut but shallow, Laurie will be fine once she stops losing blood.

'We all get injured from time to time,' says Dan. It's not until he's finished wrapping the bandage that he looks at her face. She's not crying, but her face is scrunched up as she holds back tears. 'Are you okay?' he asks, anxious.

Laurie lets out a breath. 'Yeah. It's just…the damn press. And Mom says I should never have taken up with Jon in the first place. And Rorschach probably hates me now as well, and I wasn't sure you didn't either.'

'He doesn't and I don't,' says Dan quickly. 'I was going to phone you, but you weren't there and I don't know your new number. Sorry. I guess that's not much of an excuse.'

'Not really,' says Laurie. 'Coward.'

Dan forces a laugh. 'Yeah. Sorry.'

Laurie shakes her head. 'Is Rorschach okay?'

'He's fine. Are you?'

'I'm managing.' She looks tired, fierce and beautiful. Dan wants to tell her he loves her and doesn't quite dare. 'If getting knifed in alleys counts as managing.'

'Happens to all of us.' Dan hesitates, then carries on talking. 'There's something I should tell you, but Rorschach would probably kill me for it.'

'You can't say that and then not tell me,' says Laurie. 'Go on.'

'He was abused as a kid. I don't have the details, I'm not sure I want the details, but…being yelled at by a woman twice his size…'

Laurie looks up at the streetlamp stained sky above them. 'Oh,' she says. 'I really did screw up then.'

'I've done the same thing. It's not quite the same because I'm a guy, but at first being that small just made him nervous. I think it was the same thing. Probably.'

Laurie turns to Dan, eyes bright and this time not with tears. 'Did he tell you that I love you? Both of you?'

'Yes. Um. I love you too.' And it feels awkward to say it like this, too casual and too meaningful at once. 'But if I have to choose between you and Rorschach, then it's going to be him. I'm sorry.'

Laurie shakes her head hard, hair whipping behind her. 'Don't ever apologise for that.' And she kisses Dan suddenly, lips soft on his, for a moment he's surprised by the lack of mandibles, then he's kissing back. They break away smiling guiltily, co-conspirators. 'I'll see you,' says Laurie. Dan doesn't know how to reply so he watches her leave, yellow stripes and one white arm fading into the night.


	24. Slough

Rorschach lies in the weak sun filtering through Daniel's kitchen window. It will be spring soon he tells himself, soon he'll be able to go outside again, but instead of the sharp sting of anticipation the thought fills him with a sort of dopey contentment. Everything will come with time, right now he will just curl up and enjoy the sun.

When Rorschach shifts it feels uncomfortable, as if he's wearing too tight clothes, and he twists himself across the floor trying to stop his skin feeling like constriction. He snarls, his pleasure in the sunlight ruined, as his writhing only makes it feel worse. Itching starts up under his skin and scratching it is about as helpful as scratching a plaster cast. The smooth tiles are no help, maybe carpet would work, but when Rorschach stands up his wings slide from his back and pool on the floor.

Rorschach stares at them, wondering if he should be alarmed. But by the time he's thought that it's clear he's not alarmed, there's no pain and he still feels sleepy, stupefied. This is another weird imp thing, he decides, his body probably knows what it's doing even if he doesn't. Morbid curiosity prompts him to reach out and touch a fallen wing. It still looks soft but has hardened into its folds like a dead leaf and flakes slightly at his touch. He shudders.

Daniel is in the living room watching a nature program. Rorschach climbs onto his lap, feeling clumsy without his wings to boost him.

'Hey there,' says Daniel, he runs a hand over Rorschach's head and down his back then freezes in horror. 'Where are your wings?' he asks, eyes wide behind his glasses.

'Fell off,' says Rorschach. 'Think it's natural.'

'Maybe,' says Daniel, calming down and finger walking his hand over Rorschach's back. Rorschach tries to shrug him off as it makes the itching worse. 'They were looking a bit tattered around the edges. Ah, here.' He pets at a point on Rorschach's back and Rorschach frowns as he realises he can barely feel it. 'There's something soft under your skin.'

'New wings?'

'I think so. I think you're going to shed your skin as well.'

'Mm. Feels horrible. Tight and itchy.'

Dan responds to the complaint by rubbing his fingers over Rorschach's chest, half kneading half scratching at the skin. Rorschach sighs with relief when he feels it loosen. Looking down he sees his skin pulling away from his body like a blister. But it feels so good. The wool of Daniel's sweater provides a slightly rough surface and when Rorschach rubs against it experimentally it makes him moan with relief. He writhes across Daniel's lap, pushing his back and sides against the sweater while Daniel's hands work across his front. It feels like taking off a pair of too small shoes, he wriggles with pleasure, completely lost to it. And there's a lump beneath him he didn't expect.

'Finding this interesting, Daniel?' he asks, putting one hand on the bulge in Daniel's pants. Daniel groans.

'You are rubbing yourself all over my lap,' he points out.

'Hrrrmm,' Rorschach half hums the sound deep in his throat. It's not near enough to the full moon for him to feel an answering interest. But he caused this and Daniel is making _him_ feel better. He slides Daniel's zipper down and reaches in to free his cock. 'Don't stop,' he says. Daniel nods and his hands start to work, still firm but very careful, over Rorschach's back.

Rorschach hunches into a crouch on Daniel's lap, without wings he feels unbalanced but he wants to keep his body under Daniel's hands. He slides his mouth down over the length of Daniel's cock, no tongue and and a weak gag reflex make it easy and he is, in a slightly muddled way, ashamed of being proud of being good at this. Daniel's hand closes on the base of his tail and strokes firmly to the tip, tight skin loosening in its wake. Rorschach hums his pleasure into Daniel's cock and hears him gasp. More strokes and Rorschach sucks in time with them, Daniel's other hand moves up to scratch at his head. A sheet of skin peels away under his fingers, suddenly sounds are louder like coming up from underwater. Rorschach hadn't even noticed his hearing fading. He shifts forward to nuzzle Daniel's balls in appreciation and enjoys the moan he gets in response. He pulls back a little, not driven by his own need he can make this last, and Daniel whines.

'Keep going,' Rorschach reminds him. His voice isn't muffled, he doesn't form words with his mouth.

'You…too…' says Daniel. His hands start rubbing at Rorschach's limbs, loosening the skin but threatening his balance. Rorschach's skin is coming loose everywhere now, the itching lighter and the tightness gone. Daniel lifts a hand to rub between the fingers. The tickling surprises Rorschach, his odd whining laugh vibrates his throat. Daniel comes with a groan making both of them jump and Rorschach finds himself slipping backwards, unable to find enough purchase to stay put.

Rorschach glares up at Daniel from the floor and sees Daniel biting his lip to keep from laughing. He reaches down, offering Rorschach a hand up. 'Sorry, man,' he says. Rorschach swallows, semen tastes odd but not bad and he remembers reading somewhere that it's mostly sugar, then lets himself be hoisted back onto Daniel's lap. 'Thank you,' says Daniel quietly. Then adds, 'Most of the skin on your head is off now. Shall I see if I can work the rest loose?'

Rorschach nods and Daniel slides his hands between the layers of skin at the back of his neck, starts to slide them down slowly and carefully. Like working him out of a latex body suit. It's slow, but air on his new skin feels like water in a parched throat, and he leans into Daniel's hands in a haze of physical pleasure. His wings come loose in a flurry, stretching and swirling around and above him, making him feel complete again. Blood rushes into them and he winces at the pins and needles, flapping them hard to hurry the sensation past. Daniel laughs when he gets a faceful of wing, and ducks to avoid getting another.

The skin on Rorschach's hands and feet comes away last, giving way to chafing between Daniel's hands, and he looks down at the discarded skin on the floor. It looks like polythene shopping bags. Rorschach slips off Dan's lap and stretches, feeling his new skin move easily as he does. Looking at himself he's the same faintly off white he was when he hatched and he remedies that quickly with a thought. Black and white patterns swirl over his shiny new skin.

'You look good,' says Daniel.

'Matter of opinion,' answers Rorschach. But he thinks he looks good too. He certainly feels good right now.


	25. Implied

It's the beginning of April when the warm weather finally arrives. Laurie has landed a job waitressing, if landed is really the right word. Apparently having Silk Spectre on the staff draws in clientele even if she doesn't consider herself part of the entertainment. It's not the job she would have chosen, but she doesn't have the qualifications for anything else. And it's an actual job, which she is doing, and which doesn't involve either her mother or punching people. She's proud of herself for that.

She's also proud of herself for patrolling when she's been on her feet all day and is ready to drop. Rorschach used to do it, she tells herself, and ignores a voice in the back of her head whining that he doesn't have to do it now. It's three o'clock in the morning and she's trying to convince herself she's done enough patrolling for one day when a floating shadow catches her eye.

Rorschach is propelling himself down the street with lazy undulations of his wings, more like a fish than a bird, and he comes to rest on a lamp post almost above Laurie's head, the sulphorous yellow light turning the shifting shadows on his belly into dancing flames. His spindly frame and flat distorted features combined with the light from below throwing shadows in all the wrong places give him an infernal cast. For the first time Laurie understands why Dan calls him an imp. He seems both fiendish and fairylike, aptly described by a word that encompasses both. His tail swings below the light sending wild shadows ricocheting across the street, behind him his wings look more like a miasma than solid appendages.

'You look like you're auditioning for a horror movie,' says Laurie. It's not hugely tactful of her considering how things are between them, but she has to say something to break the dreamlike feel of the night.

Rorschach looks at her thoughtfully with eyes like gold coins. 'Warm weather now. Patrol with us.'

Laurie looks at him, his expression is as oblique as his statement, but she hopes she understands. Hopes that they want her even when they don't need her, the way she wants them. Rorschach flicks himself away from the lamp post and his wings begin the complex folding scooping motion of flight. Dan is waiting impateintly, clearly surprised to see her following in Rorschach's wake.

'Laurie,' he says.

'Hi, Dan,' she answers. 'Apparently I'm patrolling with you.'

'More efficient,' says Rorschach. He flits back and forth above them, barely visible. The night is clear, showing hazy stars above the city lights and a moon barely a sliver but so close Laurie feels she could pluck it and use it as a knife. The buildings loom with a half ghostly solidity and the night is not romantic but Romantic, Rorschach's inability to be honest about his feelings becoming some fairy creature's riddle game and quest. Laurie fights both the feeling and the urge to fall into it, Dan's upturned face shows an almost enchanted look as his eyes track the misty highlights of his lover. They start walking and the sounds of the city fail to assert reality. A vixen screams like a banshee, rough drunken shouts could be carousing goblins. Laurie shakes her head vigorously, whipping her hair about her as she does.

'Are you okay?' asks Dan.

'I feel like I'm about to find a sleeping princess or an ogre,' answers Laurie. 'It's ridiculous.'

'Because of him,' agrees Dan, looking at the figure flitting ahead of them. 'It's natural to try and identify a situation you find yourself in as something you've heard of and when fairytales are the closest thing it's easy to go with it.'

'I don't feel much like a princess,' says Laurie.

'Dan's the princess,' Rorschach informs them, suddenly closer than he seemed.

'Oh, thanks,' mutters Dan, glaring fondly at him.

'Mentioned Tam Lin,' says Rorschach.

'Can I be the cool animal helper then?' asks Laurie. 'I wanna be a fox.'

'Not playing dress up,' says Rorschach. Then he looks at Dan's owl costume at the same moment Laurie does and the three of them burst out laughing. It's only the second time she's heard Rorschach laugh and it startles her not for it's strangeness but because it's him. He's in a good mood, probably the warm weather, and Laurie takes a chance.

'Hey, I'm sorry about yelling at you,' she says.

Rorschach goes still in the air, only his wings moving, and she wonders whether she should have brought it up. Then he turns away from her, black swirls rippling uncertainly on his skin. 'Is fine. Concentrate on patrol.' And he's gone ahead of them again. Laurie figures that's all the forgiveness she's getting.

They don't invite Laurie back after patrol and she doesn't ask, but somehow she has a feeling they'll run into each other again tomorrow.


	26. Spring

They patrol with Laurie through most of April and Dan starts to worry that they’re being unfair to her with this half relationship, only half offered. Rorschach, selfish due to unawareness of others’ needs and feelings when his own need so much balancing, doesn’t seem to notice or care. Neither does Laurie. She makes no demands on them, goes to work during the day but stays for breakfast first, banters with Rorschach easily and doesn’t mention either sex or stability. She’s not waiting for them to make a decision, Dan realises, she’s enjoying their company not hanging on and hoping for more. Dan wonders whether she would leave if she found a more satisfying relationship. Probably. And that’s a relief because it means she’s satisfied with this and he can stop worrying about her. No, he can return to worrying about Rorschach, he thinks ruefully.

The reason for that thought is that Rorschach, half way through a bowl of greek yoghurt and honey, has suddenly stopped eating and camouflaged himself against the table. A moment later Dan hears the cry, not a mating call but soft and plaintive yet somehow peircing.

‘Hey, buddy,’ he says, forcing himself not to whisper. Whatever is calling is a long way off. ‘What is it?’

‘Female.’ His tail’s not even twitching, rigid with fear, a drop of yoghurt slides from his mandibles and splatters on the table. Dan puts a hand on his back and he trembles in one long shudder from neck to tail.

‘Of your species?’ says Laurie. She stands up and puts her hand over Dan’s on Rorschach’s back, he gasps like he’s been drenched in cold water but slips out of camouflage.

‘Yes.’

Three sets of straining ears can’t hear the cry again and they gradually seperate, return to their breakfasts. Rorschach seems more inclined to play with his than eat it now.

‘How do you guys reproduce, anyway?’ asks Laurie when they’ve all calmed down. Her tone of voice says she’s been wondering for a while.

‘Don’t know,’ says Rorschach.

Laurie blinks. ‘You don’t?’

Rorschach swirls his spoon through the yoghurt. ‘Thought I was human.’

‘They’re probably parasitic,’ says Dan without thinking. ‘The female looked as if she had an ovipositer.’

‘Yes,’ mutters Rorschach. ‘Parasites.’

Dan sighs. ‘You know I didn’t mean it like that.’

‘So was that the same female as before?’ asks Laurie.

‘Yes.’ Rorschach sounds definite and Dan believes him, believes he can tell when the cry is hers. ‘Not full moon though.’ He twists his tail around awkwardly. ‘Don’t know what she wants.’

‘Maybe we should go and see,’ says Laurie suddenly. ‘She knows where you live right? It might be better if all three of us confront her than letting her get you on your own.’

Rorschach swallows, then nods. ‘Going to call her. Be careful. Don’t trust me.’

Dan moves closer, takes one of Rorschach’s hands in his. Rorschach tilts his head back and cries out, not a mating call but something soft and inviting. A cry answers from outside, lilting with hope and Dan swallows sudden pity for the one making it. She raped Rorschach, he reminds himself, and feels more appropriate anger rise at the thought.

A figure suddenly appears outside the kitchen window, it seems as if she’s blinked into existence although Dan knows she just dropped her camouflage. She is deep, blood red, her stomach is swollen and she taps at the window almost nervously. It’s Laurie that opens it and then stands blocking it, hands on hips, glaring at the female imp. The imp ignores her and looks at Rorschach.

‘Surrounding yourself with more of them?’ she says scornfully. ‘Don’t you have any instincts?’

‘Friends,’ says Rorschach. ‘You’re not. Why are you here?’

She splays one red hand across her rounded belly. ‘I’m pregnant.’

Rorschach ducks his head. ‘No,’ he says, moans almost. Dan squeezes his hand. The female tries to flit past Laurie and finds herself yanked back by the tail.

‘Look you,’ says Laurie. ‘He doesn’t want you here.’

‘That doesn’t matter,’ says the female, hovering with her tail still in Laurie’s hand. ‘They’re his eggs too.’

‘Eggs?’ says Rorschach. ‘How many?’

‘Thousands,’ says the female with a shrug. ‘Only one will develop though. Our child.’ The last two words have a lilting, inviting quality. ‘It needs you. It needs to be born.’

Rorschach quivers and his hand slips from Dan’s, there’s a faint flush of red up his spine. ‘How?’ he asks hoarsely.

‘Come with me,’ she says. ‘I’ll tell you. We shouldn’t talk about these things in front of humans.’

Rorschach moves towards her on all fours, only the length of the kitchen table but Dan catches his breath. ‘No. Not going anywhere with you.’ There’s a buzz underlying the words, they threaten to dissolve into chittering. But Rorschach stares at her defiantly holding his ground not so much against her as his own instincts. The sound of a thrush singing bursts out from beyond the room, followed by the chirps and calls of the dawn chorus. The female glances behind her uneasily, not liking the heralding of dawn.

‘Are you really going to let your child die?’ she asks.

‘Thousands would anyway. Eggs don’t develop. Just one more.’

‘But one that could have lived but for your selfishness,’ she says.

‘Parasitic. Aren’t we? Not going to force a woman to bear my child. Not. Not…’ But whatever else he wanted to say comes out as chittering, and Dan puts a hand on his shoulder.

‘Why not? It’s what we do.’ And her voice has that odd lilt again, as if it’s meant to be hypnotic. Maybe it is.

‘You’ve had your answer,’ says Dan. ‘There’s nothing for you here.’

‘Right,’ says Laurie. And the female twists around and bites Laurie’s wrist hard. Laurie gasps and drops her tail, letting the female dart out of the window. ‘You could have just asked!’ Laurie yells after her.

Rorschach insists on bandaging Laurie’s wrist even though he’s still trembling. He tucks the last end in but doesn’t let go of her hand, just staring at her with huge eyes. ‘Stay,’ he says. ‘She’ll come back. Stay.’

‘Can she hurt you?’ asks Laurie. ‘She doesn’t have a sting.’

‘Instinct. Part of me wants to, says I should. If she finds a way to…to trigger that. Might need one person to fight her and one to fight me.’

‘Oh,’ says Laurie. She glances at Dan. ‘Of course I’ll stay.’

And Dan doesn’t know whether to be relieved, or horrified at how awkward it’s going to be.


	27. Help

They spend the first night after Rorschach invites Laurie to stay curled together in Dan’s bed, too anxious to sleep. Rorschach lies on his stomach, head tucked under Dan’s arm. His wings are spread over them, fluttering and twitching until the tickling makes Laurie giggle and she shoves her hand over her mouth, offering muffled apologies. The second night they have to sleep, still curled together with Rorschach between them, like a sleeping wolf pack ready to take on any threat that wakes them. By the second week Laurie is almost used to lifting a tail aside as she slips out of bed to dress for work.

They patrol every night, sometimes all three of them together, sometimes one of them with Rorschach and one of the others alone. Fighting together does as much as living together to make Rorschach and Laurie friends. They watch one another’s backs, criticise one another’s techniques, trade fierce grins afterwards and don’t tell Dan when one of them gets carried away.

Laurie and Rorschach are patrolling together that night. It’s cloudy and drizzling but since the rain’s not cold Rorschach is fine, raindrops rolling off his skin as if he’s got a built in raincoat. He doesn’t seem to like it though, he’s been twitchy and irritable all night, tail lashing every time he stands still. They stop to shelter in the mouth of an alley when the rain suddenly stops drizzling and starts bucketing. Rorschach sits down on the damp ground and fixes his gaze disconcertingly on Laurie’s face, as if he thinks eye contact might induce telepathy.

‘Hey, what is it?’ asks Laurie, bending down to give his tail a friendly tug.

Rorschach quickly flicks it around his legs. ‘Living with us,’ he says.

‘You asked me to,’ says Laurie neutrally. It’s true, she’s been going to her job, of course, but she always goes back to Dan’s house for the night. Usually she comes back there for dinner.

‘Know. Didn’t mean. Wanted. Dan wants.’ The alley floor is paved with cracked brown stones and Rorschach’s white colouring is going slowly beige. ‘Thought you. Might help.’ He visibly takes a breath, thin chest expanding like a bellows. ‘Wanted to do something for him.’

Is he propositioning her on Dan’s behalf? If so maybe she should just say ‘yes’ and put the poor guy out of his misery. Even if the two of them should really learn to do their own propositioning.

‘What did Dan want?’ she asks gently.

‘Wants me to sting him,’ he says. His hand closes around his sting as he says it.

‘Kinky,’ says Laurie. ‘If you want my advice you should go for it.’ She remembers them in the ship, Dan pressed back against the wall with Rorschach’s mandibles at his throat. Desire coils low in her belly.

Rorschach hisses, red triangles standing out suddenly against the beige tinge of his skin, and yanks at a handful of her hair. Laurie’s hands bunch into fists as she resists the urge to retaliate by grabbing at his wings. Instead she grabs him by the waist and picks him up, receiving a kick in the stomach as she does.

A scream rings out and they jump apart, the fight with each other abandoned as they turn their heads, trying to pinpoint the sound. Then Laurie starts running towards it, Rorschach flying overhead.

There are only two muggers, either of them could handle this alone. Except Rorschach dives straight into the middle of them and tries to land a punch with an arm like a twig.

‘Shit,’ breathes Laurie. Rorschach’s form is perfect, if he was twice the size and less like a stick insect. Currently it’s shock that’s saving him. He hasn’t even tried to camouflage himself, and the muggers are too busy staring at him to do more than clumsily fend him off. Laurie gets over there quickly before it wears off.

With the muggers handcuffed Laurie makes sure the victim is okay and willing to walk home by herself before turning on Rorschach.

‘What the fuck?’ she asks.

‘Language,’ says Rorschach primly, flicking his tail around his feet.

‘They could have squished you,’ says Laurie. ‘Did you just forget you’re three feet high, or something?’

‘Hrm.’ Rorschach takes off and starts flying back towards the alley. Laurie follows, cooling off under the downpour.

‘I could teach you martial arts,’ she says, as they settle back against the alley walls. ‘It might work out better for you than boxing, if you must try hitting people instead of stinging them.’

Rorschach goes brown, matching the bricks behind him, and Laurie abruptly recalls their earlier conversation.

‘I was talking about _fighting_,’ she says with a grin. Then, more seriously, ‘You really want me to help you sting Dan?’

‘Want you to watch. Find out what he wants. Make sure I don’t...don’t go too far.’ Rorschach says, fading in and out of vision as he tries to stop camouflaging himself.

Laurie nods. ‘Okay. Um. You realise I’m going to be getting off on watching you?’

‘Understood,’ says Rorschach, as if he’s acknowledging a status report. His tail is twitching again, though, and he looks very small.

‘Are you okay with doing it?’ Laurie blurts out. ‘Not that I think Dan would pressure you but you seem a bit-’

‘Been thinking about it. Don’t want to hurt him but he would enjoy this.’

‘Okay,’ says Laurie again. She can act as damage control if Rorschach freaks out, she thinks, as well as monitoring. And if he doesn’t freak out then at the very least she’ll have something to get off on for months.


End file.
